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CAYLORD
TRINTEOINU.S.A.
The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://archive.org/details/cu31924027972052
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CHILD'S HISTORY
OF
ENGLAND
BY
CHARLES DICKENS
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
PATTEN WILSON
London :
J. M. DENT & CO.
New York : E. P. BUTTON & CO.
1902
TABLE OF THE REIGNS
Beginning with King Alfred the Great
The Reign of Alfred the Great .
The Reign of Edward the Elder .
The Reign of Athelstan . . , .
The Reigns of the Six Boy-Kings
THE SAXONS
. hegan in 871
. hegan in 901
. hegan in 925
ended in 901
ended in 925
ended in 941
began in 941 . ended in 1016
and lasted 30 years,
and lasted 24 years,
and lasted z6 years,
and lasted 75 years.
TPIE DANES, AND THE RESTORED SAXONS
The Reign of Canute ... ... began in 1016 . ended in 1035 . and lasted ig years.
The Reign of Harold Harefoot . . . began in 1035 . ended in 1040 . and lasted 5 years.
The Reign of Hardicanute began in 1040 . ended in 1042 . and lasted 2 years.
The Reign of Edward the Confessor began in 1042 . ended in 1066 . and lasted 24 years.
The Reign of Harold the Second, and the Norman Conquest, were also
within the year 1066.
The Reign of William the First, called I .
the Conqueror . . ... ./began
THE NORMANS
~. in 1066
ended in 1087 . and lasted 31 years.
The Reign of William the Second, called! !,„„„„• , 0- -„j-j :« ji * j
Rufus I- began in 1087 . ended m iioo . and lasted 13 years.
The Reign of Henry the First-; called) i,^„ - , , ■ j 1 ^ j
Fine-Scholar I-began m iioo . ended in 1135 . and lasted 35 years.
The Reigns of Matilda and Stephen. . hegan in 1135 . ended in 1154 . and lasted 19 years.
THE PLANTAGENETS
The Reign of Henry the Second . . .
The Reign of Richard the First, called 1
the Lion-Heart J
The Reign of John, called Lackland .
The Reign of Henry the Third . . .
The Reign of Edward the First, called "
Longshanks j
The Reign of Edward the Second . ,
The Reign of Edward the Third . . .
The Reign of Richard the Second . .
began in 11 54
began in 11 89
began in 1199
began in 1216
■began in 1272
began in 1307
began in 1327
began in 1377
ended in 1189
ended in X199
ended in 1216
ended in 1272
ended in 1307
ended in 1327
ended in 1377
ended in 1399
and lasted 35 years.
and lasted 10 years.
and lasted 17 years,
and lasted 56 years.
and lasted 35 years.
and lasted 20 years,
and lasted 50 years,
and lasted 22 years.
VI
TABLE OF THE REIGNS
THE FLAi^TAGET^ETS— continued
The Reign of Henry the Fourth, called \r^„,„ ;
Bolingbroke J- began i
The Reign of Henry the Fifth.
The Reign of Henry the Sixth . .
The Reign of Edward the Fourth
The Reign of Edward the Fifth .
The Reign of Richard the Third .
in 1399
hegan in 1413
began in 1422
began in 146 1
began in 1483
began in 1483
ended in 1413
ended in 1422
ended in 1461
ended in 1483
ended in 1483
ended in 14S5
and lasted 14 years.
and lasted 9 years,
and lasted 39 years,
and lasted 22 years.
{and lasted a few
weeks,
and lasted 2 years.
THE TUDORS
began in 1485 . ended in 1509 . and lasted 24 years,
began in 1509 . ended in 1547 and lasted 38 years,
began in 1547 . ended in 1553 . and lasted 6 years,
began in 1553 . ended in 1558 . and lasted 5 years.
The Reign of Elizabeth began in 1558 . ended in 1603 and lasted 45 years.
The Reign of Henry the Seventh
The Reign of Henry the Eighth ,
The Reign of Edward the Sixth .
The Reign of Mary
THE STUARTS
The Reign of James the First .
The Reign of Charles the First
began in 1603
began in 1625
ended in 1625
ended in 1649
and lasted 23 years,
and lasted 24 years.
THE COMMONWEALTH
The Council of State and Government "l r^„„„ :„*: jj-^ ji..j
by Parliament | began in 1649 ended in 1653 . and lasted 4 years.
The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell . began in 1653 , ended in 1658 . and lasted 5 years.
The Protectorate of Richard Cromwell . began tn 1658 . ended in 1659 . and lasted 7 months.
The Council of State and Government \^„^„„„j ■ ,,_„ .„j^j :„ aa fand lasted thirteen
by Parliament | resumed in 1659 ended m 1660 -^ ^^^^j^^
THE STUARTS RESTORED
The Reign of Charles the Second
The Reign of James the Second .
began in 1660
began in 1685
ended in 1685
ended in 1688
and lasted 25 years,
and lasted 3 years.
THE REVOLUTION— 1688. (Comprised in the concluding chapter)
The Reign of William III. and Mary II. began in i68g . ended in 1695 . and lasted 6 years.
The Reign of William III ... ended in 1702 . and lasted 13 years.
The Reign of Anne began in 1702 ended in 1714 . and lasted 12 years.
The Reign of George the First . . . began in 1714 . ended in 1727 . and lasted 13 years.
The Reign of George the Second . . . began in 1727 . ended in 1760 . and lasted 33 years.
The Reign of George the Third . . began in 1760 . ended in 182a . and lasted 60 years.
The Reign of George the Fourth . . . began in 1820 . ended in 1830 . and lasted 10 years.
The Reign of William the Fourth . . began in 1830 . ended in 1837 . and lasted 7 years.
The Reign of Victoria began in 1837.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, AND TABLE OF
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Ancient England and the Romans. From 50 years before
Christ, to the year of our Lord 450 . . . . i
CHAPTER II
Ancient England under the Early Saxons From the year
450, to the year 871 . . .... 13
CHAPTER III
England under the Good Saxon Alfred, and Edward the
Elder. From the year 871, to The year 901 . . 18
CHAPTER IV
England under Athelstan and the Six Boy-Kings. From
the year 925, to the year 1016 ..... 27
CHAPTER V
England under Canute the Dane. From the year ioi5 to
the year 1035 ....... 38
CHAPTER VI
England under Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and
Edward the Confessor. From the year 1035, to the
year 1066 ........ 40
CHAPTER VII
England under Harold the Second, and Conquered by
THE Normans. All in the same year, 1066 . . .48
viii CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE AND CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII
England under William the First, the Norman Con-
queror. From the year 1066, to the year 1087 . 53
CHAPTER IX
England under William the Second, called Rufus. From
the year 1087, to the year iioo ..... 64
CHAPTER X
England under Henry the First, called Fine-Scholar.
From the year iioo, to the year 1135 . . . . 71
CHAPTER XI
England under Matilda and Stephen. From the year 1135,
to the year 1154 . . . . . . . 83
CHAPTER XII
Parts First and Second.
England under Henry the Second. From the year 11 54, to
the year 1189 ....... 87
CHAPTER XIII
England under Richard the First, called the Lion-
Heart. From the year 1189, to the year 1199 . . 109
CHAPTER XIV
England under John, called Lackland. From the year
1199, to the year 1216 ...... 121
CHAPTER XV
England under Henry the Third. From the year 1216, to
the year 1272 •-..... 13;
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE AND CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER XVI
England under Edward the First, called Longshanks.
From the year 1272, to the year 1307 . . .148
CHAPTER XVII
England under Edward the Second. From the year 1307,
to the year 1327 ....... 170
CHAPTER XVIII
England under Edward the Third. From the year 1327,
to the year 1377 ....... 180
CHAPTER XIX
England under Richard the Second. From the year 1377,
to the year 1399 ....... 196
CHAPTER XX
England under Henry the Fourth, called Bolingbroke.
From the year 1399 to the year 1 41 3 .... 208
CHAPTER XXI
Farts First and Second
England under Henry the Fifth. From the year 1413, to
the year 1422 ....... 215
CHAPTER XXII
Farts First, Second (The Story of Joan of Arc), and Third
England under Henry the Sixth. From the year 1422, to
the year 1461 ....... 228
CHAPTER XXIII
England under Edward the Fourth. From the year 1461,
to the year 1483 ....... 2112
X CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE AND CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXIV
England under Edward the Fifth. For a few weeks in the
year 1483 ........ 263
CHAPTER XXV
England under Richard the Third. From the year 1483, to
the year 1485 ....... 268
CHAPTER XXVI
England under Henry the Seventh. From the year 1485 to
the year 1509 ....... 275
CHAPTER XXVII
England under Henry the Eighth, called Bluff King Hal
and Burly King Harry. From the year 1509, to the year
1533 287
CHAPTER XXVIII
England under Henry the Eighth, called Bluff King
Hal and Burly King Harry. From the year 1533, to the
year 1547 ........ 302
CHAPTER XXIX
England under Edward the Sixth. From the year 1547, to
the year 1553 ••■•... 313
CHAPTER XXX
England UNDER Mary. From the year 1553, to the year 1558 . 323
CHAPTER XXXI
Parts First, Second, and Third
England under Elizabeth. From the year 1558, to the year
1603 ........
340
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE AND CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER XXXII
Paris First and Second
England under James the First. From the year 1603, to the
year 1625 . . . . . . -371
CHAPTER XXXIII
Parts First, Second, Third, and Fourth
England under Charles the First. From the year 1625, to
the year 1649 . ..... 392
CHAPTER XXXIV
Parts First and Second
England under Oliver Cromwell. From the year 1649, to
the year 1660 ....... 427
CHAPTER XXXV
Parts First and Second
England under Charles the Second, called the Merry
Monarch. From the year 1660, to the year 1685 . . 447
CHAPTER XXXVI
England under James the Second. From the year 1685, to
the year 1688 ....... 473
CHAPTER XXXVII
Conclusion. From the year 1688, to the year 1837 . 490
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Death of Harold
Ancient Britons
British Warrior at the time of the Roman
Caractacus
boadicea
Saxon King
Saxon Arms . ' .
Alfred and the Cakes
Canute the Musician
Danish Arms
Norman Soldier
William the Conqueror
Hereward the Wake at Ely
Death of William Rufus .
The White Ship
Matilda Escaping from Oxford
Saracen Lady enquiring for Becket
The Murder of Thomas 1 Becket
Stocks— Twelfth Century .
Saracen Archer
Death of King Richard I .
The Murder of Prince Arthur .
nvasion
PAGE
Frontispiece
I
5
7
II
H
19
21
39
41
49
55
59
70
79
84
88
99
no
114
119
122
XIV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Death of King John .
Head-dresses of the Time of Henry III
Robert Bruce .
Prince Edward in Palestine
The Head of Wallace on London Bridge
COMYN Stabbed by Bruce .
Scottish Warrior
Edward the Third .
First Cannon at Crecy
Genoese Cross-bowman
The Six Burgesses of Calais
Richard the Second .
Wat Tyler and the Tax Collector
Henry the Fourth ....
Field of the Battle of Shrewsbury
James the First (of Scotland) in Prison
At Agincourt .
At the Battle of Agincourt
Henry the Sixth
An Archer of Henry the Sixth
Joan of Arc
The Making of Waxen Images
Queen Margaret .
Alexander Iden with the Head of Jack Cade
Edward the Fourth .
Margaret and the Robber .
The Murder of Clarence .
Carriage of the Fifteenth Century
131
136
149
151
162
167
174
181
i8s
188
191
197
198
209
212
213
216
221
228
230
235
241
243
246
252
25s
261
263
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
XV
Richard the Third .
Richmond at Bosworth
Henry the Seventh .
A Lady of 1485
The Pillory
A Dandy, Henry the Seventh Period .
Henry the Eighth ....
Chained Bibles in the Churches.
The Arrest of Cardinal Wolsey.
Queen Anne Boleyn ....
Guard of Henry the Eighth
Edward the Sixth ....
Ket the Tanner addressing his Followers
Mary the First ....
The Torture of the Boot .
Bishop Hooper. ....
Elizabeth at Traitor's Gate
Elizabeth .....
Mary Queen of Scots embarking at Calais
Soldier of Elizabeth
Young Douglas steals the Keys of Loch Leven Castle
Arms of the Tudor Period
Cannon of the Tudor Period
Spanish Vessel out of Action
James the First ....
Raleigh in the Tower
Guy Fawkes preparing the Slow Match
Musketeer of James the First .
PAGB
269
273
275
277
281
284
288
295
299
307
314
319
324
326
331
333
340
344
346
349
362
364
367
372
375
383
388
XVI
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Charles the First ....
Cromwell and Hampden
A Cavalier of Charles I .
Finding Charles First's Correspondence
Oliver Cromwell ....
Prince Charles hiding in the Oak
Cromwell's Ironsides
Puritan ......
Charles the Second ....
The People drank the King's Health (Charles II)
Bring out your Dead
London Streets during the Plague
Yeoman of Guard (Charles II) .
Old London Street Lamp .
James the Second ....
Monmouth .....
Flight of Monmouth
Flight of James the Second
Capture of Judge Jeffreys
William the Third ....
Mary the Second ....
PAGB
393
401
413
419
427
433
439
442
447
450
454
457
463
470
474
476
479
487
488
491
492
ANCIENT BRITONS
CHAPTER I
ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS
If you look at a Map of the World, you will see, in the left-
hand upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two Islands
lying in the sea. They are England and Scotland, and Ireland.
England and Scotland form the greater part of these Islands.
Ireland is the next in size. The little neighbouring islands,
which are so small upon the Map as to be mere dots, are
chiefly little bits of Scotland — broken off, I dare say, in the
course of a great length of time, by the power of the restless
water.
In the old days, a long, long while ago, before our Saviour
was born on earth and lay asleep in a manger, these Islands
were in the same place, and the stormy sea roared round them,
just as it roars now. But the sea was not alive, then, with great
ships and brave sailors, sailing to and from all parts of the
world. It was very lonely. The Islands lay solitary, in the
great expanse of water. The foaming waves dashed against
their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their forests ; but
the winds and waves brought no adventurers to land upon
A '
i A CHILD^S history of ENGLAND
the Islands, and the savage Islanders knew nothing of the rest
of the world, and the rest of the world knew nothing of thein.
It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient
people, famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to these
Islands, and found that they produced tin and lead ; both very
useful things, as you know, and both produced to this very
hour upon the sea-coast. The most celebrated tin mines in
Cornwall are, still, close to the sea. One of them, which I
have seen, is so close to it that it is hollowed out underneath
the ocean ; and the miners say, that in stormy weather, when
they are at work down in that deep place, they can hear the
noise of the waves thundering above their heads. So, the
Phcenicians, coasting about the Islands, would come, without
much difficulty, to where the tin and lead were.
The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for these metals,
and gave the Islanders some other useful things in exchange.
The Islanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost naked,
or only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining
their bodies, as other savages do, with coloured earths and the
juices of plants. But the Phoenicians, sailing over to the
opposite coasts of France and Belgium, and saying to
people there, " We have been to those white cliffs across the
water, which you can see in fine weather, and from that
country, which is called Britain, we bring this tin and lead,"
tempted some of the French and Belgiums to come over also.
These people settled themselves on the south coast of England,
which is now called Kent ; and, although they were a rough
people too, they taught the savage Britons some useful arts,
and improved that part of the Islands. It is probable that
other people came over from Spain to Ireland, and settled
there.
Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with the
Islanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild bold people ;
almost savage still, especially in the interior of the country
away from the sea where the foreign settlers seldom went ;
but hardy, 'brave, and strong.
The whole country was covered with forests, and swamps.
The greater part of it was very misty and cold. There were
no roads, no bridges, no streets, no houses that you would
ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS 3
think deserving of the name. A town was nothing but a collec-
tion of straw-covered huts, hidden in a thick wood, with a ditch
all round, and a low wall, made of mud, or the trunks of trees
placed one upon another. The people planted little or no
corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle. They
made no coins, but used metal rings for money. They were
clever in basket-work, as savage people often are; and they
could make a coarse kind of cloth, and some very bad earthen-
ware. But in building fortresses they were much more clever.
They made boats of basket-work, covered with the skins of
animals, but seldom, if ever, ventured far from the shore. They
made swords, of copper mixed with tin ; but these swords were
of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow would
bend one. They made light shields, short pointed daggers,
and spears — which they jerked back after they had thrown
them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather fastened to the
stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten an enemy's horse.
The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or
forty tribes, each commanded by its own little king, were
constantly fighting with one another, as savage people usually
do ; and they always fought with these weapons.
They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent was
the picture 0/ a white horse. They could break them in and
manage them wonderfully well. Indeed, the horses (of which
they had an abundance, though they were rather small) were
so well taught in those days, that they can scarcely be said
to have improved since ; though the men are so much wiser.
They understood, and obeyed, every word of command ; and
would stand still by themselves, in all the din and noise of
battle, while their masters went to fight on foot. The Britons
could not have succeeded in their most remarkable art, without
the aid of these sensible and trusty animals. The art I mean,
is the construction and management of war-chariots or cars,
for which they have ever been celebrated in history. Each of
the best sort of these chariots, not quite breast high in front, and
open at the back, contained one man to drive, and two or three
others to fight — all standing up. The horses who drew them
were so well trained, that they would tear, at full gallop, over
the most stony ways, and even through the woods ; dashing
4 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
down their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, and cutting:
them to pieces with the blades of swords, or scythes, which
were fastened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond the car
on each side, for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while
at full speed, the horses would stop at the driver's com-
mand. The men within would leap out, deal blows about
them with their swords like hail, leap on the horses, on the pole,
spring back into the chariots anyhow ; and, as soon as they
were safe, the horses tore away again.
The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called the
Religion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought over,
in very early times indeed, from the opposite country of France,
anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship
of the Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of
some of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses. Most of its cere-
monies were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who
pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands,
and wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told the
ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in a golden case. But it
is certain that the Druidical ceremonies included the sacrifice
of human victims, the torture of some suspected criminals, and,
on particular occasions, even the burning alive, in immense
wicker cages, of a number of men and animals together. The
Druid Priests had some kind of veneration for the Oak, and
for the mistletoe — the same plant that we hang up in houses
at Christmas Time now — when its white berries grew upon the
Oak. They met together in dark woods, which they called
Sacred Groves ; and there they instructed, in their mysterious
arts, young men who came to them as pupils, and who some-
times stayed with them as long as twenty years.
These Druids built great Temples and altars, open to the
sky, remains of some of which are yet standing. Stohehenge,
on Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of
these. Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, on
Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form another. We
know, from examination of the great blocks of which such
buildings are made, that they could not have been raised
without the aid of some ingenious machines, which are common
now, but which the ancient Britons certainly did not use in
ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS
making their own uncomfort-
able houses. I should not
wonder if the Druids, and
their pupils who stayed with
them twenty years, knowing
more than the rest of the
Britons, kept the people out
of sight while they made
these buildings, and then pre-
tended that they built them
by magic. Perhaps they had
a hand in the fortresses too ;
at all events, as they were
very powerful, and very much
believed in, and as they made
and executed the laws, and
paid no taxes, I don't wonder
that they liked their trade.
And, as they persuaded the
people that the more Druids
there were, the better off the
people would be, I don't won-
der that there were a good
many of them. But it is
pleasant to think that there
are no Druids, now, who go
on in that way, and pretend
to carry Enchanters' Wands
and Serpents' Eggs — and of
course there is nothing of
the kind, anywhere.
Such was the improved
condition of the ancient
Britons, fifty-five years be-
fore the birth of Our Saviour,
when the Romans, under
their great General, Julius
Caesar, were masters of all
the rest of the known world.
British Warrior at the time
THB Roman Invasion
6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Julius Csesar had then just conquered Gaul ; and hearing, in
Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island with the white
cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it —
some of whom had been fetched over to help the Gauls in the
war against him — he resolved, as he was so near, to come and
conquer Britain next.
So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this Island of ours,
with eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came
from the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, " because
thence was the shortest passage into Britain ; " just for the
same reason as our steam-boats now take the same track, every
day. He expected to conquer Britain easily : but it was not
such easy work as he supposed — for the bold Britons fought most
bravely; and, what with not having his horse-soldiers with
him (for they had been driven back by a storm), and what with
having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by a high tide after
they were drawn ashore, he ran great risk of being totally
defeated. However, for once that the bold Britons beat him,
he beat them twice ; though not so soundly but that he was
very glad to accept their proposals of peace, and go away.
But, in the spring of the next year, he came back ; this time,
with eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. The
British tribes chose, as their general-in-chief, a Briton, whom
the Romans in their Latin language called Cassivellaunus,
but whose British name is supposed to have been Caswallon.
A brave general he was, and well he and his soldiers fought the
Roman army ! So well, that whenever in that war the Roman
soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle of the
rapid British chariots, they trembled in their hearts. Besides
a number of smaller battles, there was a battle fought near
Canterbury, in Kent ; there was a battle fought near Chertsey,
in Surrey ; there was a battle fought near a marshy little town
in a wood, the capital of that part of Britain which belonged
to Cassivellaunus, and which was probably near what is
now Saint Albans, in Hertfordshire. However, brave CASSIVEL-
LAUNUS had the worst of it, on the whole ; though he and his
men always fought like lions. As the other British chiefs were
jealous of him, and were always quarrelling with him, and with
one another, he gave up, and proposed peace. Julius Caesar
CARACTACUS
ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS 9
was very glad to grant peace easily, and to go away again with
all his remaining ships and men. He had expected to find
pearls in Britain, and he may have found a few for anything I
know ; but, at all events, he found delicious oysters, and I am
sure he found tough Britons — of whom, I dare say, he made the
same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the great French General
did, eighteen hundred years afterwards, when he said they were
such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were
beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never will.
Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time, there
was peace in Britain. The Britons improved their towns and
mode of life : became more civilised, travelled, and learnt a
great deal from the Gauls and Romans. At last, the Roman
Emperor, Claudius, sent AULUS Plautius, a skilful general,
with a mighty force, to subdue the Island, and shortly after-
wards arrived himself. They did little ; and OSTORIUS
Scapula, another general, came. Some of the British Chiefs
of Tribes submitted. Others resolved to fight to the death.
Of these brave men, the bravest was Caractacus, or Caradoc,
who gave battle to the Romans, with his army, among the
mountains of North Wales. " This day," said he to his soldiers,
" decides the fate of Britain ! Your liberty, or your eternal
slavery, dates from this hour. Remember your brave ancestors,
who drove the great Caesar himself across the sea ! " On
hearing these words, his men, with a great shout, rushed upon
the Romans. But the strong Roman swords and armour were
too much for the weaker British weapons in close conflict. The
Britons lost the day. The wife and daughter of the brave
Caractacus were taken prisoners; his brothers delivered
themselves up ; he himself was betrayed into the hands of
the Romans by his false and base step-mother: and they
carried him, and all his family, in triumph to Rome.
But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison,
great in chains. His noble air, and dignified endurance of
distress, so touched the Roman people who thronged the streets
to see him, that he and his family were restored to freedom.
No one knows whether his great heart broke, and he died in
Rome, or whether he ever returned to his own dear country.
English oaks have grown up from acorns, and withered away,
lo A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
when they were hundreds of years old — and other oaks have
sprung up in their places, and died too, very aged — since the
rest of the history of the brave CaractacUS was forgotten.
Still, the Britons would not yield. They rose again and
again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose, on
every possible occasion. SUETONIUS, another Roman general,
came, and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called MONA),
which was supposed to be sacred, and he burnt the Druids in
their own wicker cages, by their own fires. But, even while he
was in Britain, with his victorious troops, the BRITONS rose.
Because BOADICEA, a British queen, the widow of the King of
the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her
property by the Romans who were settled in England, she was
scourged, by order of Catus a Roman officer ; and her two
daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and her
husband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury,
the Britons rose, with all their might and rage. They drove
Catus into Gaul ; they laid the Roman possessions waste ;
they forced the Romans out of London, then a poor little town,
but a trading place ; they hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by
the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. SUETONIUS
strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. They
strengthened their army, and desperately attacked his, on the
field where it was strongly posted. Before the first charge of
the Britons was made, BOADICEA, in a war-chariot, with her
fair hair sti;eaming in the wind, and her injured daughters
lying at her feet, drove among the troops, and cried to them
for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. The
Britons fought to the last ; but they were vanquished with great
slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison.
Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When
Suetonius left the country, they fell upon his troops, and
retook the Island of Anglesey. Agricola came, fifteen or
twenty years afterwards, and retook it once more, and devoted
seven years to subduing the country, especially that part of
it which is now called Scotland; but, its people, the
Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. They
fought the bloodiest battles with him ; they killed their very
wives and children, to prevent his making prisoners of them ;
ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS 1 1
BOADICEA
they fell, fighting, in such great numbers that certain hills in
Scotland are yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled up
above their graves. The Emperor Hadrian came, thirty years
afterwards, and still they resisted him. The Emperor Severus
came, nearly a hundred years afterwards, and they worried his
great army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by thousands,
in the bogs and swamps. Caracalla, the son and successor of
Severus, did the most to conquer them, for a time ; but not by
force of arms. He knew how little that would do. He yielded
up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons
the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace,
after this, for seventy years.
Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce,
seafaring people from the countries to the North of the Rhine,
the great river of Germany, on the banks of which the best
grapes grow to make the German wine. They began to come,
in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul and Britain, and to
plunder them. They were repulsed by CarausiuS, a native
either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the
Romans to the command, and under whom the Britons first
began to fight upon the sea. But, after this time, they renewed
their ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which was
then the name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, a
12 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions
into the South of Britain. All these attacks were repeated,
at intervals, during two hundred years, and through a long
succession of Roman Emperors and chiefs ; during all which
length of time, the Britons rose against the Romans, over and
over again. At last, in the days of the Roman Emperor,
HONORIUS, when the Roman power all over the world was
fast declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at
home, the Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain,
and went away. And still, at last, as at first, the Britons rose
against them, in their old brave manner ; for, a very little while
before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates, and
declared themselves an independent people.
Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Caesar's first
invasion of the Island, when the Romans departed from it for
ever. In the course of that time, although they had been the
cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done much
to improve the condition of the Britons. They had made
great military roads; they had built forts; they had taught
them how to dress, and ,arm themselves, much better than
they had ever known how to do before ; they had refined
the whole British way of living. Agricola had built a great
wall of earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from
Newcastle to beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out
the Picts and Scots ; HADRIAN had strengthened it ; Severus,
finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of stone.
Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by means of Roman
ships, that the Christian Religion was first brought into Britain,
and its people first taught the great lesson that, to be good in
the sight of GOD, they must love their neighbours as themselves,
and do unto others as they would be done by. The Druids
declared that it was very wicked to believe any such thing,
and cursed all the people who did believe it, very heartily.
But, when the people found that they were none the better
for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the
curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and the rain
fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just began to
think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified
very little whether they cursed or blessed. After which, the
ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS 13
pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in numbers,' and the Druids
took to other trades.
Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England.
It is but little that is known of those five hundred years ; but
some remains of them are still found. Often, when labourers
are digging up the ground, to make foundations for houses or
churches, they light on rusty money that once belonged to the
Romans. Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets
from which they drank, and of pavement on which they trod,
are discovered among the earth that is broken by the plough, or
the dust that is crumbled by the gardener's spade. Wells that
the Romans sunk, still yield water ; roads that the Romans
made, form part of our highways. In some old battle-fields,
British spear-heads and Roman armour have been found, mingled
together in decay, as they fell in the thick pressure of the fight.
Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass, and of mounds
that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in
almost all parts of the country. Across the bleak moors of
Northumberland, the wall of Severus, overrun with moss and
weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin ; and the shepherds and their
dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury
Plain, Stonehenge yet stands ; a monument of the earlier time
when the Roman name was unknown in Britain, and when the
Druids, with their best magic wands, could not have written it
in the sands of the wild sea-shore.
CHAPTER II
ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS
The Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, when the
Britons began to wish they had never left it. For, the Roman
soldiers being gone, and the Britons being much reduced in
numbers by their long wars, the Picts and Scots came pouring
in, over the broken and unguarded wall of Severus, in swarms.
They plundered the richest towns, and killed the people ; and
came back so often for more booty and more slaughter, that the
unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As if the Picts and
14 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
SAXON KING
Scots were not bad enough on land, the Saxons attacked the
islanders by sea ; and, as if something more were still wanting
to make them miserable, they quarrelled bitterly among them-
selves as to what prayers they ought to say, and how they ought
to say them. The priests, being very angry with one another
on these questions, cursed one another in the heartiest manner ;
and (uncommonly like the old Druids) cursed all the people
whom they could not persuade. So, altogether, the Britons
were very badly off, you may believe.
They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a letter to
Rome entreating help — which they called The Groans of the
Britons ; and in which they said, " The barbarians chase us
into the sea, the sea throws us back upon the barbarians, and
we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword,
or perishing by the waves." But, the Romans could not help
them, even if they were so inclined ; for they had enough to do
to defend themselves against their own enemies, who were then
very fierce and strong. At last, the Britons, unable to bear their
hard condition any longer, resolved to make peace with the
Saxons, and to invite the Saxons to come into their country,
and help them to keep out the Picts and Scots.
It was a British Prince named Vortigern who took this
resolution, and who made a treaty of friendship with Hengist
and HoRSA, two Saxon chiefs. Both of these names, in the old
ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS 15
Saxon language, signify Horse ; for the Saxons, like many other
nations in a rough state, were fond of giving men the names of
animals, as Horse, Wolf, Bear, Hound. The Indians of North
America, — a very inferior people to the Saxons, though — do the
same to this day.
Hengist and HORSA drove out the Picts and Scots ; and
VORTIGERN, being grateful to them for that service, made no
opposition to their settling themselves in that part of England
which is called the Isle of Thanet, or to their inviting over
more of their countrymen to join them. But Hengist had a
beautiful daughter named ROWENA; and when, at a feast,
she filled a golden goblet to the brim with wine, and gave it to
VORTIGERN, saying in a sweet voice, " Dear King, thy health ! "
the King fell in love with her. My opinion is, that the cunning
Hengist meant him to do so, in order that the Saxons might
have greater influence with him ; and that the fair RowENA
came to that feast, golden goblet and all, on purpose.
At any rate, they were married ; and, long afterwards, when-
ever the King was angry with the Saxons, or jealous of their
encroachments, RoWENA would put her beautiful arms round
his neck, and softly say, " Dear King, they are my people ! Be
favourable to them, as you loved that Saxon girl who gave you
the golden goblet of wine at the feast ! " And, really, I don't
see how the King could help himself.
Ah ! We must all die ! In the course of years, VORTIGERN
died — he was dethroned, and put in prison, first, I am afraid ;
and RowENA died ; and generations of Saxons and Britons
died ; and events that happened during a long, long time, would
have been quite forgotten but for the tales and songs of the old
Bards, who used to go about from feast to feast, with their white
beards, recounting the deeds of their forefathers. Among the
histories of which they sang and talked, there was a famous
one, concerning the bravery and virtues of KiNG ARTHUR,
supposed to have been a British Prince in those old times.
But, whether such a person really lived, or whether there were
several persons whose histories came to be confused together
under that one name, or whether all about him was invention,
no one knows.
I will tell you, shortly, what is most interesting in the early
1 6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Saxon times, as they are described in these songs and stories of
the Bards.
In, and long after, the days of VORTIGERN, fresh bodies of
Saxons, under various chiefs, came pouring into Britain. One
body, conquering the Britons in the East, and settling there,
called their kingdom Essex ; another body settled in the West,
and called their kingdom Wessex ; the Northfolk, or Norfolk
people, established themselves in one place ; the Southfolk, or
Suffolk people, established themselves in another ; and gradu-
ally seven kingdoms or states arose in England, which were
called the Saxon Heptarchy. The poor Britons, falling back
before these crowds of fighting men whom they had innocently
invited over as friends, retired into Wales and the adjacent
country ; into Devonshire, and into Cornwall. Those parts of
England long remained unconquered. And in Cornwall now —
where the sea-coast is very gloomy, steep, and rugged — where,
in the dark winter-time, ships have been often wrecked close
to the land, and every soul on board has perished — where the
winds and waves howl drearily, and split the solid rocks into
arches and caverns — there are very ancient ruins, which the
people call the ruins of KING ARTHUR'S Castle.
Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon kingdoms,
because the Christian religion was preached to the Saxons
there (who domineered over the Britons too much, to care
for what tkey said about their religion, or anything else) by
Augustine, a monk from Rome. King Ethelbert, of
Kent, was soon converted ; and the moment he said he was
a Christian, his courtiers all said tkey were Christians; after
which, ten thousand of his subjects said they were Christians
too. Augustine built a little church, close to this King's
palace, on the ground now occupied by the beautiful cathedral
of Canterbury. Sebert, the King's nephew, built on a muddy
marshy place near London, where there had been a temple to
Apollo, a church dedicated to Saint Peter, which is now West-
minster Abbey. And, in London itself, on the foundation of
a temple to Diana, he built another little church, which has
risen up, since that old time, to be Saint Paul's.
After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of Northumbrla,
who was such a good king that it was said a woman or child
ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS 17
might openly carry a purse of gold, in his reign, without fear,
allowed his child to be baptised, and held a great council to
consider whether he and his people should all be Christians or
not. It was decided that they should be. COIFI, the chief
priest of the old religion, made a great speech on the occasion.
In this discourse, he told the people that he had found out the
old gods to be impostors. " I am quite satisfied of it," he said.
" Look at me ! I have been serving them all my life, and they
have done nothing for me; whereas, if they had been really
powerful, they could not have decently done less, in return for
all I have done for them, than make my fortune. As they have
never made my fortune, I am quite convinced they are im-
postors ! " When this singular priest had finished speaking, he
hastily armed himself with sword and lance, mounted a war-
horse, rode at a furious gallop in sight of all the people to the
temple, and flung his lance against it as an insult. From that
time, the Christian religion spread itself among the Saxons,
and became their faith.
The next very famous prince was EGBERT. He lived about
a hundred and fifty years afterwards, and claimed to have a
better right to the throne of Wessex than Beortric, another
Saxon prince who was at the head of that kingdom, and who
married Edburga, the daughter of Off A, king of another of
the seven kingdoms. This Queen Edburga was a handsome
murderess, who poisoned people when they offended her. One
day, she mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble belonging to
the court ; but her husband drank of it too, by mistake, and
died. Upon this, the people revolted, in great crowds; and
running to the palace, and thundering at the gates, cried,
" Down with the wicked queen, who poisons men ! " They
drove her out of the country, and abolished the title she had
disgraced. When years had passed away, some travellers came
home from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia they had
seen a ragged beggar-woman, who had once been handsome,
but was then shrivelled, bent, and yellow, wandering about the
streets, crying for bread ; and that this beggar-woman was the
poisoning English queen. It was, indeed, EDBURGA ; and so
she died, without a shelter for her wretched head.
Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in conse-
B
1 8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
quence of his having claimed the crown of Wessex (for he
thought his rival might take him prisoner and put him to death),
sought refuge at the court of CHARLEMAGNE, King of France.
On the death of Beortric, so unhappily poisoned by mistake,
Egbert came back to Britain ; succeeded to the throne of
Wessex ; conquered some of the other monarchs of the seven
kingdoms ; added their territories to his own ; and, for the first
time, called the country over which he ruled, England.
And now, new enemies arose, who, for a long time, troubled
England sorely. These were the Northmen, the people of Den-
mark and Norway, whom the English called the Danes. They
were a warlike people, quite at home upon the sea ; not Chris-
tians ; very daring and cruel. They came over in ships, and
plundered and burned wheresoever they landed. Once, they
beat Egbert in battle. Once, Egbert beat them. But, they
cared no more for being beaten than the English themselves.
In the four following short reigns, of Ethelvv^ULF, and his
sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred, they came
back, over and over again, burning and plundering, and laying
England waste. In the last - mentioned reign, they seized
Edmund, King of East England, and bound him to a tree.
Then, they proposed to him that he should change his re-
ligion ; but he, being a good Christian, steadily refused.
Upon that, they beat him, made cowardly jests upon him,
all defenceless as he was, shot arrows at him, and, finally,
struck off his head. It is impossible to say whose head
they might have struck off next, but for the death of KiNG
Ethelred from a wound he had received in fighting against
them, and the succession to his throne of the best and wisest
king that ever lived in England.
CHAPTER III
ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED
Alfred the Great was a young man, three-and-twenty years
of age, when he became king. Twice in his childhood, he
ALFRED THE GREAT
had been taken to Rome, where the Saxon nobles were in the
habit of going on journeys which they supposed to be reh'gious ;
and, once, he had stayed for some time in Paris, Learning,
however, was so little cared for, then, that at twelve years old
he had not been taught to read ; although, of the sons of
King Ethelwulf, he, the youngest, was the favourite.
But he had — as most men who grow up to be great and good
are generally found to have had — an excellent mother ; and,
one day, this lady, whose name was OSBURGA, happened, as
she was sitting among her sons, to read a book of Saxon
poetry. The art of printing was not known until long and
long after that period, and the book, which was written, was
what is called " illuminated," with beautiful bright letters,
richly painted. The brothers admiring it very much, their
mother said, " I will give it to that one of you four princes
who first learns to read." Alfred sought out a tutor that
very day, applied himself to learn with great diligence, and
soon won the book. He was proud of it, all his life.
This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought nine
battles with the Danes, He made some treaties with them
20 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
too, by which the false Danes swore that they would quit the
country. They pretended to consider that they had taken
a very solemn oath, in swearing this upon the holy bracelets
that they wore, and which were always buried with them when
they died ; but they cared little for it, for they thought nothing
of breaking oaths and treaties too, as soon as it suited their
purpose, and coming back again to fight, plunder, and burn,
as usual. One fatal winter, in the fourth year of KiNG Alfred's
reign, they spread themselves in great numbers over the whole
of England ; and so dispersed and routed the King's soldiers
that the King was left alone, and was obliged to disguise him-
self as a common peasant, and to take refuge in the cottage of
one of his cowherds who did not know his face.
Here, KiNG ALFRED, while the Danes sought him far and
near, was left alone one day, by the cowherd's wife, to watch
some cakes which she put to bake upon the hearth. But, being
at work upon his bow and arrows, with which he hoped to
punish the false Danes when a brighter time should come,
and thinking deeply of his poor unhappy subjects whom the
Danes chased through the land, his noble mind forgot the
cakes, and they were burnt. " What ! " said the cowherd's
wife, who scolded him well when she came back, and little
thought she was scolding the King, " you will be ready enough
to eat them by-and-by, and yet you cannot watch them, idle
dog?"
At length, the Devonshire men made head against a new
host of Danes who landed on their coast ; killed their chief,
and captured their flag ; on which was represented the likeness
of a Raven — a very fit bird for a thievish army like that, I
think. The loss of their standard troubled the Danes greatly,
for they believed it to be enchanted — woven by the three
daughters of one father in a single afternoon — and they had
a story among themselves that when they were victorious in
battle, the Raven stretched his wings and seemed to fly ; and
that when they were defeated, he would droop. He had good
reason to droop, now, if he could have done anything half so
sensible ; for, KING Alfred joined the Devonshire men ;
made a camp with them on a piece of firm ground in the
midst of a bog in Somersetshire ; and prepared for a great
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ALFRED THE GREAT 23
attempt for vengeance on the Danes, and the deliverance of
his oppressed people.
But, first, as it was important to know how numerous these
pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, King Alfred,
being a good musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or min-
strel, and went, with his harp, to the Danish camp. He played
and sang in the very tent of GUTHRUM the Danish leader, and
entertained the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed to
think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of their tents,
their arms, their discipline, everything that he desired to know.
And right soon did this great king entertain them to a different
tune ; for, summoning all his true followers to meet him at an
appointed place, where they received him with joyful shouts and
tears, as the monarch whom many of them had given up for
lost or dead, he put himself at their head, marched on the
Danish camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and
besieged them for fourteen days to prevent their escape. But,
being as merciful as he was good and brave, he then, instead of
killing them, proposed peace : on condition that they should
altogether depart from that Western part of England, and settle
in the East ; and that GUTHRUM should become a Christian,
in remembrance of the Divine religion which now taught his
conqueror, the noble ALFRED, to forgive the enemy who had so
often injured him. This, GUTHRUM did. At his baptism.
King Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was an
honourable chief who well deserved that clemency ; for, ever
afterwards, he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes
under him were faithful too. They plundered and burned no
more, but worked like honest men. They ploughed, and sowed,
and reaped, and led good honest English lives. And I hope
the children of those Danes played, many a time, with Saxon
children in the sunny fields ; and that Danish young men fell
in love with Saxon girls, and married them ; and that English
travellers, benighted at the doors of Danish cottages, often went
in for shelter until morning ; and that Danes and Saxons sat by
the red fire, friends, talking of King Alfred the Great.
All the Danes were not like these under GUTHRUM ; for,
after some years, more of them came over, in the old plundering
and burning way — among them a fierce pirate of the name of
24 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
Hastings, who had the boldness to sail up the Thames to
Gravesend, with eighty ships. For three years, there was a
war with these Danes ; and there was a famine in the country,
too, and a plague, both upon human creatures and beasts. But
King Alfred, whose mighty heart never failed him, built
large ships nevertheless, with which to pursue the pirates on
the sea ; and he encouraged his soldiers, by his brave example,
to fight valiantly against them on the shore. At last, he drove
them all away ; and then there was repose in England.
As great and good in peace, as he was great and good in
war, King Alfred never rested from his labours to improve
his people. He loved to talk with clever men, and with
travellers from foreign countries, and to write down what they
told him, for his people to read. He had studied Latin after
learning to read English, and now another of his labours was,
to translate Latin books into the English-Saxon tongue, that
his people might be interested, and improved by their contents.
He made just laws, that they might live more happily and
freely ; he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might
be done them ; he was so careful of their property, and punished
robbers so severely, that it was a common thing to say that
under the great KiNG ALFRED, garlands of golden chains
and jewels might have hung across the streets, and no man
would have touched one. He founded schools ; he patiently
heard causes himself in his Court of Justice ; the great desires
of his heart were, to do right to all his subjects, and to leave
England better, wiser, happier in all ways, than he found it.
His industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day
he divided into certain portions, and in each portion devoted
himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his time
exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were all of
the same size, were notched across at regular distances, and
were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down,
he divided the day into notches, almost as accurately as we
now divide it into hours upon the clock. But, when the candles
were first invented, it was found that the wind and draughts
of air, blowing into the palace through the doors and windows,
and through the chinks in the walls, caused them to gutter and
burn unequally. To prevent this, the King had them put into
ALFRED THE GREAT 25
cases formed of wood and white horn. And these were the
first lanthorns ever made in England.
All this time, he was afflicted with a terrible unknown dis-
ease, which caused him violent and frequent pain that nothing
could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all the troubles of
his life, like a brave good man, until he was fifty-three years
old ; and then, having reigned thirty years, he died. He died
in the year nine hundred and one ; but, long ago as that is, his
fame, and the love and gratitude with which his subjects re-
garded him, are freshly remembered to the present hour.
In the next reign, which was the reign of EDWARD, surnamed
The Elder, who was chosen in council to succeed, a nephew
of King Alfred troubled the country by trying to obtain the
throne. The Danes in the East of England took part with
this usurper (perhaps because they had honoured his uncle so
much, and honoured him for his uncle's sake), and there was
hard fighting ; but, the King, with the assistance of his sister,
gained the day, and reigned in peace for four and twenty years.
He gradually extended his power over the whole of England,
and so the Seven Kingdoms were united into one.
When England thus became one kingdom, ruled over by one
Saxon king, the Saxons had been settled in the country more than
four hundred and fifty years. Great changes had taken place
in its customs during that time. The Saxons were still greedy
eaters and great drinkers, and their feasts were often of a noisy
and drunken kind ; but many new comforts and even elegancies
had become known, and were fast increasing. Hangings for the
walls of rooms, where, in these modern days, we paste up paper,
are known to have been sometimes made of silk, ornamented
with birds and flowers in needlework. Tables and chairs were
curiously carved in different woods ; were sometimes decorated
with gold or silver ; sometimes even made of those precious
metals. Knives and spoons were used at table ; golden orna-
ments were worn — with silk and cloth, and golden tissues and
embroideries ; dishes were made of gold and silver, brass and
bone. There were varieties of drinking-horns, bedsteads,
musical instruments. A harp was passed round, at a feast, like
the drinking-bowl, from guest to guest ; and each one usually
sang or played when his turn came. The weapons of the Saxons
26 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
were stoutly made, and among them was a terrible iron hammer
that gave deadly blows, and was long remembered. The Saxons
themselves were a handsome people. The men were proud of
their long fair hair, parted on the forehead ; their ample beards,
their fresh complexions, and clear eyes. The beauty of the
Saxon women filled all England with a new delight and grace.
I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I stop to say this
now, because under the Great Alfred, all the best points of
the English-Saxon character were first encouraged, and in him
first shown. It has been the greatest character among the
nations of the earth. Wherever the descendants of the Saxon
race have gone, have sailed, or otherwise made their way, even
to the remotest regions of the world, they have been patient,
persevering, never to be broken in spirit, never to be turned
aside from enterprises on which they have resolved. In Europe,
Asia, Africa, America, the whole world over ; in the desert, in
the forest, on the sea ; scorched by a burning sun, or frozen by
ice that never melts; the Saxon blood remains unchanged.
Wheresoever that race goes, there, law, and industry, and safety
for life and property, and all the great results of steady
perseverance, are certain to arise.
I pause, to think with admiration of the noble king who, in
his single person, possessed all the Saxon virtues. Whom
misfortune could not subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil,
whose perseverance nothing could shake. Who was hopeful in
defeat, and generous in success. Who loved justice, freedom,
truth, and knowledge. Who, in his care to instruct his people,
probably did more to preserve the beautiful old Saxon language,
than I can imagine. Without whom, the English tongue in
which I tell his story might have wanted half its meaning.
As it is said that his spirit still inspires some of our best English
laws, so, let you and I pray that it may animate our English
hearts, at least to this — to resolve, when we see any of our
fellow-creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our best, while
life is in us, to have them taught ; and to tell those rulers whose
duty it is to teach them, and who neglect their duty, that they
have profited very little by all the years that have rolled away
since the year nine hundred and one, and that they are far
behind the bright example of KiNG Alfred the Great.
ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS 27
CHAPTER IV
ENGLAND UNDER ATHEI.STAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS
Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded that king.
He reigned only fifteen years ; but he remembered the glory of
his grandfather, the great Alfred, and governed England well.
He reduced the turbulent people of Wales, and obliged them to
pay him a tribute in money, and in cattle, and to send him their
best hawks and hounds. He was victorious over the Cornish
men, who were not yet quiet under the Saxon government. He
restored such of the old laws as were good, and had fallen into
disuse ; made some wise new laws, and took care of the poor
and weak. A strong alliance, made against him by Anlaf a
Danish prince, CONSTANTINE King of the Scots, and the
people of North Wales, he broke and defeated in one great
battle, long famous for the vast numbers slain in it. After that,
he had a quiet reign ; the lords and ladies about him had
leisure to become polite and agreeable ; and foreign princes
were glad (as they have sometimes been since) to come to
England on visits to the English court.
When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his brother
Edmund, who was only eighteen, became king. He was the
first of six boy-kings, as you will presently know.
They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste
for improvement and refinement. But he was beset by the
Danes, and had a short and troubled reign, which came to a
troubled end. One night, when he was feasting in his hall,
and had eaten much and drunk deep, he saw, among the
company, a noted robber named Leof, who had been banished
from England. Made very angry by the boldness of this man,
the King turned to his cup-bearer, and said, " There is a robber
sitting at the table yonder, who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in
the land — a hunted wolf, whose life any man may take, at any
time. Command that robber to depart ! " "I will not depart ! "
said Leof. "No?" cried the King. "No, by the Lord!" said
Leof. Upon that the King rose from his seat, and, making
passionately at the robber, and seizing him by his long hair.
28 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
tried to throw him down. But the robber had a dagger under-
neath his cloak, and, in the scuffle, stabbed the King to death.
That done, he set his back against the wall, and fought so
desperately, that although he was soon cut to pieces by the
King's armed men, and the wall and pavement were splashed
with his blood, yet it was not before he had killed and wounded
many of them. You may imagine what rough lives the kings
of those times led, when one of them could struggle, half drunk,
with a public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed in
presence of the company who ate and drank with him.
Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak and
sickly in body, but of a strong mind. And his armies fought
the Northmen, the Danes, and Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings,
as they were called, and beat them for the time. And, in nine
years, Edred died, and passed away.
Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen years of age ; but
the real king, who had the real power, was a monk named
DuNSTAN — a clever priest ; a little mad, and not a little proud
and cruel.
Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither
the body of King Edmund the Magnificent was carried, to be
buried. While yet a boy, he had got out of his bed one night,
(being then in a fever), and walked about Glastonbury Church
when it was under repair; and, because he did not tumble off
some scaffolds that were there, and break his neck, it was
reported that he had been shown over the building by an
angel. He had also made a harp that was said to play of
itself — which it very likely did, as .^Eolian Harps, which are
played by the wind, and are understood now, always do. For
these wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies, who
were jealous of his favour with the late King Athelstan, as a
magician ; and he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and
thrown into a marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause
a great deal of trouble yet.
The priests of those days were, generally, the only scholars.
They were learned in many things. Having to make their own
convents and monasteries on uncultivated grounds that were
granted to them by the Crown, it was necessary that they
should be good farmers and good gardeners, or their lands
ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS 29
would have been too poor to support them. For the decoration
of the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort of the
refectories where they ate and drank, it was necessary that
there should be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters,
among them. For their greater safety in sickness and accident,
living alone by themselves in solitary places, it was necessary
that they should study the virtues of plants and herbs, and
should know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and
how to set broken limbs. Accordingly, they taught themselves,
and one another, a great variety of useful arts ; and became
skilful in agriculture, medicine, surgery, and handicraft. And
when they wanted the aid of any little piece of machinery,
which would be simple enough now, but was marvellous then,
to impose a trick upon the poor peasants, they knew very well
how to make it ; and did make it many a time and often, I
have no doubt.
Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most
sagacious of these monks. He was an ingenious smith, and
worked at a forge in a little cell. This cell was made too short
to admit of his lying at full length when he went to sleep — as if
that did any good to anybody ! — and he used to tell the most
extraordinary lies about demons and spirits, who, he said, came
there to persecute him. For instance, he related that one day
when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little window,
and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure ; where-
upon, having his pincers in the fire, red hot, he seized the devil
by the nose, and put him to such pain, that his bellowings were
heard for miles and miles. Some people are inclined to think
this nonsense a part of Dunstan's madness (for his head never
quite recovered the fever), but I think not. I observe that it
induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy man, and
that it made him very powerful. Which was exactly what he
always wanted.
On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy-king
Edwy, it was remarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury,
(who was a Dane by birth), that the King quietly left the
coronation feast, while all the company were there. Odo, much
displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek him. Dunstan, find-
ing him in the company of his beautiful young wife Elgiva,
30 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
and her mother Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not only
grossly abused them, but dragged the young King back into the
feasting-hall by force. Some, again, think Dunstan did this
because the young King's fair wife was his own cousin, and the
monks objected to people marrying their own cousins ; and I
believe he did it, because he was an imperious, audacious, ill-
conditioned priest, who, having loved a young lady himself
before he became a sour monk, hated all love now, and every-
thing belonging to it.
The young King was quite old enough to feel this insult.
Dunstan had been Treasurer in the last reign, and he soon
charged Dunstan with having taken some of the last king's money.
The Glastonbury Abbot fled to Belgium (very narrowly escap-
ing some pursuers who were sent to put out his eyes, as you
will wish they had, when you read what follows), and his abbey
was given to priests who were married ; whom he always, both
before and afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with
his friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the King's young brother,
Edgar, as his rival for the throne ; and, not content with this
revenge, he caused the beautiful queen Elgiva, though a lovely
girl of only seventeen or eighteen, to be stolen from one of the
Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-hot iron, and
sold into slavery in Ireland. But the Irish people pitied and
befriended her ; and they said, " Let us restore the girl-queen to
the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy ! " and they
cured her of her cruel wound, and sent her home as beautiful as
before. But the villain Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo,
caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joyfully
hurrying to join her husband, and to be hacked and hewn with
swords, and to be barbarously maimed and lamed, and left to
die. When Edwy the Fair (his people called him so, because
he was so young and handsome) heard of her dreadful fate, he
died of a broken heart ; and so the pitiful story of the poor young
wife and husband ends ! Ah ! Better to be two cottagers in
these better times, than king and queen of England in those
bad days, though never so fair !
Then came the boy-king, EDGAR, called the Peaceful, fifteen
years old. Dunstan, being still the real king, drove all married
priests out of the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them
ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS 31
by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid order called the
Benedictines. He made himself Archbishop of Canterbury, for
his greater glory ; and exercised such power over the neigh-
bouring British princes, and so collected them about the King,
that once, when the King held his court at Chester, and went on
the river Dee to visit the monastery of St John, the eight oars
of his boat were pulled (as the people used to delight in relating
in stories and songs) by eight crowned kings, and steered by the
King of England. As Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan
and the monks, they took great pains to represent him as the
best of kings. But he was really profligate, debauched, and
vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young lady from the
convent at Wilton ; and Dunstan, pretending to be very much
shocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon his head
for seven years — no great punishment, I dare say, as it can
hardly have been a more comfortable ornament to wear, than a
stewpan without a handle. His marriage with his second wife,
Elfrida, is one of the worst events of his reign. Hearing of
the beauty of this lady, he despatched his favourite courtier,
Athelwold, to her father's castle in Devonshire, to see if she
were really as charming as fame reported. Now, she was so
exceedingly beautiful that Athelwold fell in love with her him-
self, and married her ; but he told the King that she was only
rich — not handsome. The King, suspecting the truth when
they came home, resolved to pay the newly-married couple a
visit ; and, suddenly, told Athelwold to prepare for his im-
mediate coming. Athelwold, terrified, confessed to his young
wife what he had said and done, and implored her to disguise
her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he might
be safe from the King's anger. She promised that she would ;
but she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a
queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her
best dress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels ; and
when the King came, presently, he discovered the cheat. So,
he caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be murdered in a wood,
and married his widow, this bad Elfrida. Six or seven years
afterwards, he died ; and was buried, as if he had been all that
the monks said he was, in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he
— or Dunstan for him — had much enriched.
32 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by
wolves, which, driven out of the open country, hid themselves in
the mountains of Wales when they were not attacking travellers
and animals, that the tribute payable by the Welsh people was
forgiven them, on condition of their producing, every year, three
hundred wolves' heads. And the Welshmen were so sharp upon
the wolves, to save their money, that in four years there was not
a wolf left.
Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the Martyr, from
the manner of his death. Elfrida had a son, named Ethelred,
for whom she claimed the throne ; but Dunstan did not choose
to favour him, and he made Edward king. The boy was hunt-
ing, one day, down in Dorsetshire, when he rode near to Corfe
Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see them
kindly, he rode away from his attendants and galloped to the
castle gate, where he arrived at twilight, and blew his hunting-
horn. " You are welcome, dear King," said Elfrida, coming out,
with her brightest smiles. " Pray you dismount and enter."
" Not so, dear madam," said the King. " My company will miss
me, and fear that I have met with some harm. Please you to
give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in the saddle, to
you and to my little brother, and so ride away with the good
speed I have made in riding here." Elfrida, going in to hiring
the wine, whispered an armed servant, one cf her attendants,
who stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind
the King's horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips,
saying, " Health ! " to the wicked woman who was smiling on
him, and to his innocent brother whose hand she held in hers,
and who was only ten years old, this armed man made a spring
and stabbed him in the back. He dropped the cup and spurred
his horse away ; but, soon fainting with loss of blood, drooped
from the saddle, and, in his fall, entangled one of his feet in
the stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on ; trailing his rider's
curls upon the ground ; dragging his smooth young face through
ruts, and stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, and mud ; until
the hunters, tracking the animal's course by the King's blood,
caught his bridle, and released the disfigured body.
Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, ETHELRED,
whom Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight of his murdered
ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS 23
brother riding away from the castle gate, unmercifully beat
with a torch which she snatched from one of the attendants.
The people so disliked this boy, on account of his cruel mother
and the murder she had done to promote him, that Dunstan
would not have had him for king, but would have made
Edgitha, the daughter of the dead King Edgar, and of the
lady whom he stole out of the convent at Wilton, Queen of
England, if she would have consented. But she knew the
stories of the youthful kings too well, and would not be per-
suaded from the convent where she lived in peace ; so, Dunstan
put Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put there, and
gave him the nickname of The UNREADY — knowing that he
wanted resolution and firmness.
At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over the young
King, but, as he grew older and came of age, her influence
declined. The infamous woman, not having it in her power
to do any more evil, then retired from court, and, according
to the fashion of the time, built churches and monasteries, to
expiate her guilt. As if a church, with a steeple reaching to
the very stars, would have been any sign of true repentance for
the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered form was trailed at
his horse's heels ! As if she could have buried her wickedness
beneath the senseless stones of the whole world, piled up one
upon another, for the monks to live in !
About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died.
He was growing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever.
Two circumstances that happened in connexion with him, in
this reign of Ethelred, made a great noise. Once, he was
present at a meeting of the Church, when the question was
discussed whether priests should have permission to marry ;
and, as he sat with his head hung down, apparently thinking
about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the room,
and warn the meeting to be of his opinion. This was some
juggling of Dunstan's, and was probably his own voice disguised.
But he played off" a worse juggle than that, soon afterwards ; for,
another meeting being held on the same subject, and he and
his supporters being seated on one side of a great room, and
their opponents on the other, he rose and said, "To Christ
himself, as Judge, do I commit this cause ! " Immediately on
C
34 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
these words being spoken, the floor where the opposite party
sat gave way, and some were killed and many wounded. You
may be pretty sure that it had been weakened under Dunstan's
direction, and that it fell at Dunstan's signal. His part of the
floor did not go down. No, no. He was too good a workman
for that.
When he died, the monks settled that he was a Saint, and
called him Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just
as well have settled that he was a coach-horse, and could just
as easily have called him one.
Ethelrcd the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be
rid of this holy saint; but, left to himself, he was a poor weak
king, and his reign was a reign of defeat and shame. The
restless Danes, led by SWEYN, a son of the King of Denmark
who had quarrelled with his father and had been banished
from home, again came into England, and, year after year,
attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings
away, the weak Ethelred paid them money ; but, the more
money he paid, the more money the Danes wanted. At first,
he gave them ten thousand pounds ; on their next invasion,
sixteen thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, four and
twenty thousand pounds : to pay which large sums, the un-
fortunate English people were heavily taxed. But, as the
Danes still came back and wanted more, he thought it would
be a good plan to marry into some powerful foreign family
that would help him with soldiers. So, in the year one
thousand and two, he courted and married Emma, the sister
of Richard Duke of Normandy ; a lady who was called the
Flower of Normandy.
And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like
of which was never done on English ground, before or since.
On the thirteenth of November, in pursuance of secret instructions
sent by the King over the whole country, the inhabitants of
every town and city armed, and murdered all the Danes who
were their neighbours. Young and old, babies and soldiers,
men and women, every Dane was killed. No doubt there were
among them many ferocious men who had done the English
great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swaggering in
the houses of the English and insulting their wives and daughters,
ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS 35
had become unbearable ; but no doubt there were also among
them many peaceful Christian Danes who had married English
women and become like English men. They were all slain,
even to Gunhilda, the sister of the King of Denmark, married
to an English lord ; who was first obliged to see the murder of
her husband and her child, and then was killed herself.
When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood,
he swore that he would have a great revenge. He raised an
army, and a mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to
England ; and in all his army there was not a slave or an old
man, but every soWier was a free man, and the son of a free
man, and in the prime of life, and sworn to be revenged upon
the English nation, for the massacre of that dread thirteenth
of November, when his countrymen and countrywomen, and the
little children whom they loved, were killed with fire and sword.
And so, the sea-kings came to England in many great ships,
each bearing the flag of its own commander. Golden eagles,
ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened England
from the prows of those ships, as they came onward through the
water ; and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon
their sides. The ship that bore the standard of the King of the
sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent ; and
the King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he trusted
might all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs into
England's heart.
And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from the
great fleet, near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste,
and striking their lances in the earth as they advanced, or throw-
ing them into rivers, in token of their making all the island theirs.
In remembrance of the black November night when the Danes
were murdered, wheresoever the invaders came, they made the
Saxons prepare and spread for them great feasts ; and when
they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England
with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their
Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they
carried on this war : burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills,
granaries ; killing the labourers in the fields ; preventing the
seed from being sown in the ground ; causing famine and
starvation ; leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes.
^6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
where they had found rich towns. To crown this misery,
English officers and men deserted, and even the favourites
of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of
the English ships, turned pirates against their own country,
and aided by a storm occasioned the loss of nearly the whole
English navy.
There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who
was true to his country and the feeble King. He was a priest,
and a brave one. For twenty days, the Archbishop of Canter-
bury defended that city against its Danish besiegers ; and when
a traitor in the town threw the gates open and admitted them,
he said, in chains, " I will not buy my life with money that must
be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me what you
please ! " Again and again, he steadily refused to purchase his
release with gold wrung from the poor.
At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled
at a drunken merry-making, had him brought into the feasting-
hall.
" Now, bishop," they said, " we want gold ! "
He looked round on the crowd of angry faces : from the
shaggy beards close to him, to the shaggy beards against the
walls, where men were mounted on tables and forms to see
him over the heads of others : and he knew that his time
was come.
" I have no gold," said he.
" Get it, bishop ! " they all thundered.
" That, I have often told you I will not," said he.
They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he stood
unmoved. Then, one man struck him ; then, another ; then a
cursing soldier picked up from a heap in a corner of the hall,
where fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a great
ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which the blood came
spurting forth ; then, others ran to the same heap, and knocked
him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him ;
until one soldier whom he had baptised (willing, as I hope for
the sake of that soldier's soul, to shorten the sufferings of the
good man) struck him dead with his battle-axe.
If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of
this noble archbishop, he might have done something yet. But
ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS 37
he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and
gained so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon after-
wards came over to subdue all England. So broken was the
attachment of the English people, by this time, to their
incapable King and their forlorn country which could not
protect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a
deliverer. London faithfully stood out, as long as the King
was within its walls ; but, when he sneaked away, it also
welcomed the Dane. Then, all was over ; and the King took
refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had already
given shelter to the King's wife, once the Flower of that
country, and to her children.
Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings,
could not quite forget the great King Alfred and the Saxon
race. When Sweyn died suddenly, in little more than a month
after he had been proclaimed King of England^ they generously
sent to Ethelred, to say that they would have him for their
King again, " if he would only govern them better than he
had governed them before." The Unready, instead of coming
himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for
him. At last, he followed, and the English declared him King.
The Danes declared Canute, the son of Sweyn, King. Thus,
direful war began again, and lasted for three years, when the
Unready died. And I know of nothing better that he did,
in all his reign of eight and thirty years.
Was Canute to be King now ? Not over the Saxons, they
said ; they must have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready,
who was surnamed Ironside, because of his strength and
stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fell to, and fought
five battles — O unhappy England, what a fighting-ground it
was ! — and then Ironside, who was a big man, proposed to
Canute, who was a little man, that they two should fight it
out in single combat. If Canute had been the big man, he
would probably have said yes, but, being the little man, he
decidedly said no. However, he declared that he was willing
to divide the kingdom — to take all that lay north of Watling
Street, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester
was called, and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most
men being weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But
38 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Canute soon became sole King of England j for Ironside died
suddenly within two months. Some think that he was killed,
and killed by Cartute's orders. No one knows.
CHAPTER V
ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE
Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless King at
first. After he had clasped the hands of the Saxon chiefs, in
token of the sincerity with which he swore to be just and good
to them in return for their acknowledging him, he denounced
and slew many of them, as well as many relations of the late
King. " He who brings me the head of one of my enemies," he
used to say, " shall be dearer to me than a brother." And he
was so severe in hunting down his enemies, that he must have
got together a pretty large family of these dear brothers. He
was strongly inclined to kill EDMUND and Edward, two
children, sons of poor Ironside ; but, being afraid to do so in
England, he sent them over to the King of Sweden, with a
request that the King would be so good as to " dispose of them."
If the King of Sweden had been like many, many other men
of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut ; but
he was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly.
Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In Normandy were
the two children of the late king — Edward and Alfred by
name ; and their uncle the Duke might one day claim the crown
for them. But the Duke showed so little inclination to do so
now, that he proposed to Canute to marry his sister, the widow
of The Unready; who, being but a showy flower, and caring
for nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her children
and was wedded to him.
Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valour of the
English in his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble him
at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, and made many
improvements. He was a poet and a musician. He grew
sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at first j and
went to Rome in a pilgrim's dress, by way of washing it out.
ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE 39
CANUTE THE MUSICIAN
He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his journey ;
but he took it from the English before he started. On the
whole, however, he certainly became a far better man when he
had no opposition to contend with, and was as great a King as
England had known for some time.
The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one
day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he
caused his chair to be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to
command the tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his robe,
for the land was his j how the tide came up, of course, without
regarding him ; and how he then turned to his flatterers, and
rebuked them, saying, what was the might of any earthly king,
to the might of the Creator, who could say unto the sea, " Thus
far shalt thou go, and no farther ! " We may learn from this,
I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king ; and
that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a
liking for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long
before, that the King was fond of flattery, they would have
known better than to offer it in such large doses. And if they
had not known that he was vain of this speech (anything but a
wonderful speech it seems to me, if a good child had made it),
they would not have been at such great pains to repeat it. I
40 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together ; the King's chair
sinking in the sand ; the King in a mighty good humour with
his own wisdom ; and the courtiers pretending to be quite
stunned by it 1
It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go " thus far, and no
farther." The great command goes forth to all the kings upon
the earth, and went to Canute in the year one thousand and
thirty-five, and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it,
stood his Norman wife. Perhaps, as the King looked his last
upon her, he, who had so often thought distrustfully of Normandy,
long ago, thought once more of the two exiled Princes in their
uncle's court, and of the little favour they could feel for either
Danes or Saxons, and of a rising cloud in Normandy that
slowly moved towards England.
CHAPTER VI
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and Hardi-
CANUTE ; but his Queen, Emma, once the Flower of Normandy,
was the mother of only Hardicanute. Canute had wished his
dominions to be divided between the three, and had wished
Harold to have England ; but the Saxon people in the South
of England, headed by a nobleman with great possessions,
called the powerful Earl Godwin (who is said to have been
originally a poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to have,
instead, either Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes
who were over in Normandy. It seemed so certain that there
would be more bloodshed to settle this dispute, that many
people left their homes, and took refuge in the woods and
swamps. Happily, however, it was agreed to refer the whole
question to a great meeting at Oxford, which decided that
Harold should have all the country north of the Thames, with
London for its capital city, and that Hardicanute should have
all the south. The quarrel was so arranged ; and, as Hardi-
canute was in Denmark troubling himself very little about
HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, ETC. 41
anything but eating and getting drunk, his mother and Earl
Godwin governed the south for him.
They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling people
who had hidden themselves were scarcely at home again, when
Edward, the elder of the two exiled Princes, came over from Nor-
mandy with a few followers, to claim the English crown. His
mother Emma, however, who only cared for her last son Hardi-
canute, instead of assisting him, as he expected, opposed him so
strongly with all her influence that he was very soon glad to
get safely back. His brother Alfred was not so fortunate.
Believing in an affectionate letter, written some time afterwards
to him and his brother, in his mother's name (but whether really
with or without his mother's knowledge is now uncertain), he
allowed himself to be tempted over to England, with a good
force of soldiers, and landing on the Kentish coast, and being
met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as
far as the town of Guildford. Here, he and his men halted in
the evening to rest, having still the Earl in their company ; who
had ordered lodgings and good cheer for them. But, in the
42 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
dead of the night, when they were off their guard, being divided
into small parties sleeping soundly. after a long march and a
plentiful supper in different houses, they were set upon by the
King's troops, and taken prisoners. Next morning they were
drawn out in a line, to the number of six hundred men, and
were barbarously tortured and killed; with the exception of
every tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to the
wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse,
and sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out
of his head, and where in a few days he miserably died. I am
not sure that the Earl had wilfully entrapped him, but I suspect
it strongly.
Harold was now King all over England, though it is doubt-
ful whether the Archbishop of Canterbury '(the greater part
of the priests were Saxons, and not friendly to the Danes)
ever consented to crown him. Crowned or uncrowned, with
the Archbishop's leave or without it, he was King for four
years : after which short reign he died, and was buried ; having
never done much in life but go a hunting. He was such a fast
runner at this, his favourite sport, that the people called him
Harold Harefoot.
Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, with
his mother (who had gone over there after the cruel murder of
Prince Alfred), for the invasion of England. The Danes and
Saxons, finding themselves without a King, and dreading new
disputes, made common cause, and joined in inviting him to
occupy the Throne. He consented, and soon troubled them
enough ; for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed the
people so insupportably to enrich those greedy favourites that
there were many insurrections, especially one at Worcestor, where
the citizens rose and killed his tax-collectors; in revenge for
which he burned their city. He was a brutal King, whose first
public act was to order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot
to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end
was worthy of such a beginning. He fell down drunk, with a
goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at Lambeth, given
in honour of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a Dane named
Towed the Proud. And he never spoke again.
Edward, afterwards called by the monks The Confessor,
HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, ETC. 43
succeeded ; and his first act was to oblige his mother Emma,
who had favoured him so little, to retire into the country ; where
she died some ten years afterwards. He was the exiled prince
whose brother Alfred had been so foully killed. He had been
invited over from Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of
his short reign of two years, and had been handsomely treated
at court. His cause was now favoured by the powerful Earl
Godwin, and he was soon made King. This Earl had been
suspected by the people, ever since Prince Alfred's cruel death ;
he had even been tried in the last reign for the Prince's murder,
but had been pronounced not guilty ; chiefly, as it was supposed,
because of a present he had made to the swinish King, of a
gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and a crew of eighty
splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the new
King with his power, if the new King would help him against
the popular distrust and hatred. So they made a bargain.
Edward the Confessor got the Throne. The Earl got more
power and more land, and his daughter Editha was made
queen ; for it was a part of their compact that the King should
take her for his wife.
But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to
be beloved — good, beautiful, sensible, and kind — the King from
the first neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers,
resenting this cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by
exerting all their power to make him unpopular. Having lived
so long in Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the English.
He made a Norman Archbishop, and Norman Bishops ; his
great officers and favourites were all Normans ; he introduced
the Norman fashions and the Norman language j in imitation
of the state custom of Normandy, he attached a great seal to
his state documents, instead of merely marking them, as the
Saxon Kings had done, with the sign of the cross — ^just as poor
people who have never been taught to write, now make the same
mark for their names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and
his six proud sons represented to the people as disfavour shown
towards the English ; and thus they daily increased their own
power, and daily diminished the power of the King.
They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when
he had reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who
44 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
had married the King's sister, came to England on a visit.
After staying at the court some time, he set forth, with his
numerous train of attendants, to return home. They were to
embark at Dover. Entering that peaceful town in armour, they
took possession of the best houses, and noisily demanded to be
lodged and entertained without payment. One of the bold men
of Dover, who would not endure to have these domineering
strangers jingling their heavy swords and iron corselets up and
down his house, eating his meat and drinking his strong liquor,
stood in his doorway and refused admission to the first armed
man who came there. The armed man drew, and wounded
him. The man of Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelli-
gence of what he had done, spreading through the streets to
where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by their
horses, bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to
the house, surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors and
windows being closed when they came up), and killed the man
of Dover at his own fireside. They then clattered through the
streets, cutting down and riding over men, women, and children.
This did not last long, you may believe. The men of Dover set
upon them with great fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners,
wounded many more, and, blockading the road to the port so
that they should not embark, beat them out of the town by the
way they had come. Hereupon, Count Eustace rides as hard
as man can ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by
Norman monks and Norman lords. "Justice ! " cries the Count,
"upon the men of Dover, who have set upon and slain my
people ! " The King sends immediately for the powerful Earl
Godwin, who happens to be near ; reminds him that Dover
is under his government ; and orders him to repair to Dover
and do military execution on the inhabitants. " It does not
become you," says the proud Earl in reply, "to condemn
without a hearing those whom you have sworn to protect. I
will not do it."
The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of banish-
ment and loss of his titles and property, to appear before the
court to answer this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear.
He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son Sweyn, hastily
raised as many fighting men as their utmost power could collect,
HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, ETC. 45
and demanded to have Count Eustace and his followers sur-
rendered to the justice of the country. The King, in his turn,
refused to give them up, and raised a strong force. After some
treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons
began to fall off. The Earl, with a part of his family and
abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders ; Harold escaped to
Ireland ; arid the power of the great family was for that time
gone in England. But, the people did not forget them.
Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a
mean spirit, visited his dislike of the once powerful father and
sons upon the helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending
wife, whom all who saw her (her husband and his monks
excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously upon her fortune and
her jewels, and allowing her only one attendant, confined her
in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his — no doubt an
unpleasant lady after his own heart — was abbess or jailer.
Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his
way, the King favoured the Normans more than ever. He
invited over WiLLlAM, DuKE OF NORMANDY, the son of that
Duke who had received him and his murdered brother long ago,
and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daughter, with whom that Duke
had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her washing clothes
in a brook. William, who was' a great warrior, with a passion
for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation ; and the
Normans in England, finding themselves more numerous than
ever when he arrived with his retinue, and held in still greater
honour at court than before, became more and more haughty
towards the people, and were more and more, disliked by them.
The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well
how the people felt; for, with part of the treasure he had
carried away with him, he kept spies and agents in his pay all
over England. Accordingly, he thought the time was come
for fitting out a great expedition against the Norman-loving
King. With it, he sailed to the Isle of Wight, where he was
joined by his son Harold, the most gallant and brave of all his
family. And so the father and son came sailing up the Thames
to Southwark ; great numbers of the people declaring for them,
and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold,
against the Norman favourites !
46 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings
usually have been whensoever they have been in the hands of
monks. But the people rallied so thickly round the old Earl
and his son, and the old Earl was so steady in demanding
without bloodshed the restoration of himself and his family to
their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. The Norman
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop of London,
surrounded by their retainers, fought their way out of London,
and escaped from Essex to France in a fishing-boat. The other
Norman favourites dispersed in all directions. The old Earl
and his sons (except Sweyn, who had committed crimes against
the law) were restored to their possessions and dignities. Editha,
the virtuous and lovely Queen of the insensible King, was
triumphantly released from her prison, the convent, and once
more sat in her chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of which,
when she had no champion to support her rights, her cold-
blooded husband had deprived her.
The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored
fortune. He fell down in a fit at the King's table, and died
upon the third day afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power,
and to a far higher place in the attachment of the people than
his father had ever held. By his valour he subdued the King's
enemies in many bloody fights. He was vigorous against
rebels in Scotland — this was the time when Macbeth slew
Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds
of years afterwards, wrote his great tragedy ; and he killed the
restless Welsh King GRIFFITH, and brought his head to
England.
What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the
French coast by a tempest, is not at all certain ; nor does it at
all matter. That his ship was forced by a storm on that shore,
and that he was taken prisoner, there is no doubt. In those
barbarous days, all shipwrecked strangers were taken prisoners,
and obliged to pay ransom. So, a certain Count Guy, who was
the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold's disaster happened, seized
him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian
lord as he ought to have done, and expected to make a very
good thing of it.
But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of
HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, ETC. 47
Normandy, complaining of this treatment ; and the Duke no
sooner heard of it than he ordered Harold to be escorted to the
ancient town of Rouen, where he then was, and where he
received him as an honoured guest. Now, some writers tell
us that Edward the Confessor, who was by this time old and
had no children, had made made a will, appointing Duke
William of Normandy his successor, and had informed the
Duke of his having done so. There is no doubt that he was
anxious about his successor ; because he had even invited over,
from abroad, Edward the Outlaw, a son of Ironside, who
had come to England with his wife and three children, but
whom the King had strangely refused to see when he did come,
and who had died in London suddenly (princes were terribly
liable to sudden death in those days), and had been buried in
St Paul's Cathedral. The King might possibly have made such
a will ; or, having always been fond of the Normans, he might
have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the English
crown, by something that he said to him when he was staying
at the English court. But, certainly William did now aspire
to it ; and knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, he
called together a great assembly of his nobles, offered Harold
his daughter Adele in marriage, informed him that he meant
on King Edward's death to claim the English crown as his own
inheritance, and required Harold then and there to swear to aid
him. Harold, being in the Duke's power, took this oath upon
the Missal, or Prayer-book. It is a good example of the super-
stitions of the monks, that this Missal, instead of being placed
upon a table, was placed upon a tub ; which, when Harold had
sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full of dead men's
bones — bones, as the monks pretended, of saints. This was
supposed to make Harold's oath a great deal more impressive
and binding. As if the great name of the Creator of Heaven
and earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a
double-tooth, or a finger-nail, of Dunstan !
Within a week or two after Harold's return to England, the
dreary old Confessor was found to be dying. After wandering
in his mind like a very weak old man, he died. As he had put
himself entirely in the hands of the monks when he was alive,
they praised him lustily when he was dead. They had gone so
48 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
far, already, as to persuade him that he could work miracles ;
and had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of the
skin, to him, to be touched and cured. This was called
"touching for the King's Evil," which afterwards became a
royal custom. You know, however, Who really touched the
sick, and healed them ; and you know His sacred name is not
among the dusty line of human kings.
CHAPTER VII
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED
BY THE NORMANS
Harold was crowned King of England on the very day of the
maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to be quick
about it. When the news reached Norman William, hunting
in his park at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned to his
palace, called his nobles to council, and presently sent am-
bassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his oath and resign
the Crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of
France leagued together round Duke William for the invasion
of England. Duke William promised freely to distribute
English wealth and English lands among them. The Pope
sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring containing
a hair which he warranted to have grown on the head of Saint
Peter. He blessed the enterprise ; and cursed Harold ; and
requested that the Normans would pay " Peter's Pence " — or a
tax to himself of a penny a year on every house — a little more
regularly in future, if they could make it convenient.
King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was a
vassal of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway. This brother,
and this Norwegian King, joining their forces against England,
with Duke William's help, won a fight in which the English were
commanded by two nobles ; and then besieged York. Harold,
who was waiting for the Normans on the coast at Hastings,
with his army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the river
Derwent to give them instant battle.
He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked out by
HAROLD THE SECOND
49
their shining spears. Riding
round this circle at a dis-
tance, to survey it, he saw
a brave figure on horse-
back, in a blue mantle and
a bright helmet, whose
horse suddenly stumbled
and threw him.
" Who is that man who
has fallen ? " Harold asked
of one of his captains.
" The King of Norway,"
he replied.
" He is a tall and stately
king," said Harold, "but his
end is near."
He added, in a little
while, " Go yonder to my
brother, and tell him, if he
withdraw his troops, he shall
be Earl of Northumberland,
and rich and powerful in
England."
The captain rode away
and gave the message.
"What will he give to
my friend the King of
Norway ? " asked the
brother.
"Seven feet of earth
for a grave," replied the
captain.
" No more ? " returned
the brother, with a smile.
"The King of Norway
being a tall man, perhaps
a little more," replied the
captain.
" Ride back ! " said the
Norman Soldier
D
50 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
brother, " and tell King Harold to make ready for the
fight ! "
He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led
against that force, that his brother, and the Norwegian King,
and every chief of note in all their host, except the Norwegian
King's son, Olave, to whom he gave honourable dismissal, were
left dead upon the field. The victorious army marched to
York. As King Harold sat there at the feast, in the midst of
all his company, a stir was heard at the doors ; and messengers
all covered with mire from riding far and fast through broken
ground came hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed
in England.
The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by
contrary winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. A
part of their own shore, to which they had been driven back,
was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had once more
made sail, led by the Duke's own galley, a present from his
wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden boy stood
pointing towards England. By day, the banner of the three
Lions of Normandy, the diverse coloured sails, the gilded vanes,
the many decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the
sun and sunny water ; by night, a light had sparkled like a star
at her mast-head. And now, encamped near Hastings, with their
leader lying in the old Roman castle of Pevensey, the English
retiring in all directions, the land for miles around scorched and
smoking, fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman power,
hopeful and strong on English ground.
Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within
a week, his army was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the
Norman strength. William took them, caused them to be
led through his whole camp, and then dismissed. " The
Normans," said these spies to Harold, " are not bearded on the
upper lip as we English are, but are shorn. They are priests."
" My men," replied Harold, with a laugh, " will find those priests
good soldiers ! "
" The Saxons," reported Duke William's outposts of Norman
soldiers, who were instructed to retire as King Harold's army
advanced, "rush on us through their pillaged country with the
fury of madmen."
HAROLD THE SECOND 51
"Let them come, and come soon ! " said Duke William.
Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were
soon abandoned. In the middle of the month of October, in
the year one thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and English
came front to front. All night the armies lay encamped before
each other, in a part of the country then called Senlac, now
called (in remembrance of them) Battle. With the first dawn
of day, they arose. There, in the faint light, were the English
on a hill ; a wood behind them ; in their midst, the Royal
banner, representing a fighting warrior, woven in gold thread,
adorned with precious stones ; beneath the banner, as it rustled
in the wind, stood King Harold on foot, with two of his remain-
ing brothers by his side ; around them, still and silent as the
dead, clustered the whole English army — every soldier covered
by his shield, and bearing in his hand his dreaded English
battle-axe.
On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, foot-soldiers,
horsemen, was the Norman force. Of a sudden, a great battle-
cry, " God help us ! " burst from the Norman lines. The
English answered with their own battle-cry, " God's Rood !
Holy Rood ! " The Normans then came sweeping down the
hill to attack the English.
There was one tall Norman Knight who rode before the
Norman army on a prancing horse, throwing up his heavy sword
and catching it, and singing of the bravery of his countrymen.
An English Knight, who rode out from the EngUsh force to
meet him, fell by this Knight's hand. Another English Knight
rode out, and he fell too. ' But then a third rode out, and killed
the Norman. This was in the first beginning of the fight. It
soon raged everywhere.
The English, keeping side by side in a great mass, cared no
more for the showers of Norman arrows than if they had been
showers of Norman rain. When the Norman horsemen rode
against them, with their battle-axes they cut men and horses
down. The Normans gave way. The English pressed forward.
A cry went forth among the Norman troops that Duke William
was killed. Duke William took off his helmet, in order that his
face might be distinctly seen, and rode along the line before his
men. This gave them courage. As they turned again to face
52 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the English, some of their Norman horse divided the pursuing
body of the English from the rest, and thus all that foremost
portion of the English army fell, fighting bravely. The main
body still remaining firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and
with their battle-axes cutting down the crowds of horsemen
when they rode up, like forests of young trees, Duke William
pretended to retreat. The eager English followed. The
Norman army closed again, and fell upon them with great
slaughter.
" Still," said Duke William, " there are thousands of the
English, firm as rocks around their King. Shoot upward,
Norman archers, that your arrows may fall down upon their
faces I "
The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle still raged.
Through all the wild October day, the clash and din resounded
in the air. In the red sunset, and in the white moonlight, heaps
upon heaps of dead men lay strewn, a dreadful spectacle, all
over the ground. King Harold, wounded with an arrow in the
eye, was nearly blind. His brothers were already killed.
Twenty Norman Knights, whose battered armour had flashed
fiery and golden in the sunshine all day long, and now looked
silvery in the moonlight, dashed forward to seize the Royal
banner from the English Knights and soldiers, still faithfully
collected round their blinded King. The King received a
mortal wound, and dropped. The English broke and fled. The
Normans rallied, and the day was lost.
O what a sight beneath the moon and stars, when lights
were shining in the tent of the victorious Duke William, which
was pitched near the spot where Harold fell — and he and his
knights were carousing, within — and soldiers with torches, going
slowly to and fro, without, sought for the corpse of Harold
among piles of dead — and the Warrior, worked in golden thread
and precious stones, lay low, all torn and soiled with blood —
and the three Norman Lions kept watch over the field !
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 53
CHAPTER VIII
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN
CONQUEROR
Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, William the
Norman afterwards founded an abbey, which, under the name
of Battle Abbey, was a rich and splendid place through many
a troubled year, though now it is a grey ruin overgrown with
ivy. But the first work he had to do, was to conquer the
English thoroughly ; and that, as you know by this time, was
hard work for any man.
He ravaged several counties ; he burned and plundered
many towns ; he laid waste scores upon scores of miles of
pleasant country ; he destroyed innumerable lives. At length
Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, with other representatives
of the clergy and the people, went to his camp, and submitted
to him. Edgar, the insignificant son of Edmund Ironside,
was proclaimed King by others, but nothing came of it. He
fled to Scotland afterwards, where his sister, who was young
and beautiful, married the Scottish King. Edgar himself was
not important enough for anybody to care much about him.
On Christmas Day, William was crowned in Westminster
Abbey, under the title of WiLLlAM THE FIRST ; but he is best
known as WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. It was a strange
coronation. One of the bishops who performed the ceremony
asked the Normans, in French, if they would have Duke William
for their king ? They answered Yes. Another of the bishops
put the same question to the Saxons, in English. They too
answered Yes, with a loud shout. The noise being heard by
a guard of Norman horse-soldiers outside, was mistaken for
resistance on the part of the English. The guard instantly set
fire to the neighbouring houses, and a tumult ensued ; in the
midst of which the King, being left alone in the Abbey, with
a few priests (and they all being in a terrible fright together),
was hurriedly crowned. When the crown was placed upon his
head, he swore to govern the English as well as the best of
their own monarchs. I dare say, you think, as I do, that if
54 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
we except the Great Alfred, he might pretty easily have done
that.
Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the last
disastrous battle. Their estates, and the estates of all the
nobles who had fought against him there, King William seized
upon, and gave to his own Norman knights and nobles. Many
great English families of the present time acquired their English
lands in this way, and are very proud of it.
But what is got by force must be maintained by force.
These nobles were obliged to build castles all over England,
to defend their new property; and, do what he would, the
King could neither soothe nor quell the nation as he wished.
He gradually introduced the Norman language and the
Norman customs ; yet, for a long time the great body of the
English remained sullen and revengeful. On his going over
to Normandy, to visit his subjects there, the oppressions of his
half-brother Odo, whom he left in charge of his English king-
dom, drove the people mad. The men of Kent even invited
over, to take possession of Dover, their old enemy Count
Eustace of Boulogne, who had led the fray when the Dover
man was slain at his own fireside. The men of Hereford, aided
by the Welsh, and commanded by a chief named EDRtC THE
Wild, drove the Normans out of their country. Some of
those who had been dispossessed of their lands, banded
together in the North of England ; some, in Scotland ; some,
in the thick woods and marshes ; and whensoever they could
fall upon the Normans, or upon the English who had submitted
to the Normans, they fought, despoiled, and murdered, like
the desperate outlaws that they were. Conspiracies were set
on foot for a general massacre of the Normans, like the old
massacre of the Danes. In short, the English were in a
murderous mood all through the kingdom.
King William, fearing he might lose his conquest, came
back, and tried to pacify the London people by soft words.
He then set forth to repress the country people by stern deeds.
Among the towns which he besieged, and where he killed and
maimed the inhabitants without any distinction, sparing none,
young or old, armed or unarmed, were Ox ford. War wick, Leicester,
Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York. In all these places, and
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 57
in many others, fire and sword worked their utmost horrors, and
made the land dreadful to behold. The streams and rivers
were discoloured with blood; the sky was blackened with
smoke ; the fields were wastes of ashes ; the waysides were
heaped up with dead. Such are the fatal results of conquest
and ambition ! Although William was a harsh and angry man,
I do not suppose that he deliberately meant to work this
shocking ruin, when he invaded England. But what he had
got by the strong hand, he could only keep by the strong hand,
and in so doing he made England a great grave.
Two sons of Harold, by name EDMUND and GODWIN, came
over from Ireland, with some ships, against the Normans, but
were defeated. This was scarcely done, when the outlaws in
the woods so harrassed York, that the Governor sent to the
King for help. The King despatched a general and a large
force to occupy the town of Durham. The Bishop of that place
met the general outside the town, and warned him not to enter,
as he would be in danger there. The general cared nothing
for the warning, and went in with all his men. That night,
on every hill within sight of Durham, signal fires were seen to
blaze. When the morning dawned, the English, who had
assembled in great strength, forced the gates, rushed into the
town, and slew the Normans every one. The English after-
wards besought the Danes to come and help them. The Danes
came, with two hundred and forty ships. The outlawed nobles
joined them ; they captured York, and drove the Normans out
of that city. Then, William bribed the Danes to go away ;
and took such vengeance on the English, that all the forriier
fire and sword, smoke and ashes, death and ruin, were nothing
compared with it. In melancholy songs, and doleful stories, it
was still sung and told by cottage fires on winter evenings, a
hundred years afterwards, how, in those dreadful days of the
Normans, there was not, from the River Humber to the River
Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one cultivated field — how
there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where the human creatures
and the beasts lay dead together.
The outlaws had, at this time, what they called a Camp of
Refuge, in the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. Protected
by those marshy grounds which were difficult of approach, they
58 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
lay among the reeds and rushes, and were hidden by the mists
that rose up from the watery earth. Now, there also was, at
that time, over the sea in Flanders, an Englishman named
Hereward, whose father had died in his absence, and whose
property had been given to a Norman. When he heard of this
wrong that had been done him (from such of the exiled English
as chanced to wander into that country), he longed for revenge ;
and joining the outlaws in their camp of refuge, became their
commander. He was so good a soldier, that the Normans
supposed him to be aided by enchantment. William, even
after he had made a road three miles in length across the
Cambridgeshire marshes, on purpose to attack this supposed
enchanter, thought it necessary to engage an old lady, who
pretended to be a sorceress, to come and do a little enchant-
ment in the royal cause. For this purpose she was pushed on
before the troops in a wooden tower ; but Hereward very soon
disposed of this unfortunate sorceress, by burning her, tower
and all. The monks of the convent of Ely near at hand, how- .
ever, who were fond of good living, and who found it very
uncomfortable to have the country blockaded and their supplies
of meat and drink cut off, showed the King a secret way of
surprising the camp. So Hereward was soon defeated. Whether
he afterwards died quietly, or whether he was killed after killing
sixteen of the men who attacked him (as some old rhymes relate
that he did), I cannot say. His defeat put an end to the Camp
of Refuge ; and, very soon afterwards, the King, victorious both
in Scotland and in England, quelled the last rebellious English
noble. He then surrounded himself with Norman lords, enriched
by the property of English nobles ; had a great survey made of
all the land in England, which was entered as the property of
its new owners, on a roll called Doomsday Book ; obliged the
people to put out their fires and candles at a certain hour every
night, on the ringing of a bell which was called The Curfew ;
introduced the Norman dresses and manners ; made the Normans
masters everywTiere, and the English, servants ; turned out the
English bishops, and put Normans in their places ; and showed
himself to be the Conqueror indeed.
But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. They
were always hungering and thirsting for the riches of the English ;
Hereward the Wake at Ely
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 61
and the more he gave, the more they wanted. His priests were
as greedy as his soldiers. We know of only one Norman who
plainly told his master, the King, that he had come with him to
England to do his duty as a faithful servant, and that property
taken by force from other men had no charms for him. His
name was GuiLBERT. We should not forget his name, for it is
good to remember and to honour honest men.
Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was troubled
by quarrels among his sons. He had three living. Robert,
called CURTHOSE, because of his short legs ; WiLLlAM, called
RUFUS or the Red, from the colour of his hair ; and HENRY,
fond of learning, and called, in the Norman language, Beau-
CLERC, or Fine-Scholar. When Robert grew up, he asked of
his father the government of Normandy, which he had nominally
possessed, as a child, under his mother, MATILDA. The King
refusing to grant it, Robert became jealous and discontented ;
and happening one day, while in this temper, to be ridiculed by
his brothers, who threw water on him from a balcony as he was
walking before the door, he drew his sword, rushed up-stairs,
and was only prevented by the King himself from putting them
to death. That same night, he hotly departed with some
followers from his father's court, and endeavoured to take the
Castle of Rouen by surprise. Faihng in this, he shut himself up
in another Castle in Normandy, which the King besieged, and
where Robert one day unhorsed and nearly killed him without
knowing who he was. His submission when he discovered his
father, and the intercession of the queen and others, reconciled
them ; but not soundly ; for Robert soon strayed abroad, and
went from court to court with his complaints. He was a gay,
careless, thoughtless fellow, spending all he got on musicians
and dancers ; but his mother loved him, and often, against the
King's command, supplied him with money through a messenger
named SAMSON. At length the incensed King swore he would
tear out Samson's eyes; and Samson, thinking that his only
hope of safety was in becoming a monk, became one, went on
such errands no more, and kept his eyes in his head.
All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange coronation,
the Conqueror had been struggling, you see, at any cost of
cruelty and bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All
62 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
his reign, he struggled still, with the same object ever before
him. He was a stern, bold man, and he succeeded in it.
He loved money, and was particular in his eating, but he
had only leisure to indulge one other passion, and that was his
love of hunting. He carried it to such a height that he ordered
whole villages and towns to be swept away to make forests for
the deer. Not satisfied with sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid
waste an immense tract of country, to form another in Hampshire,
called theNew Forest. The manythousands of miserable peasants
who saw their little houses pulled down, and themselves and
children turned into the open country without a shelter, detested
him for his merciless addition to their many sufferings ; and
when, in the twenty-first year of his reign (which proved to be
the last), he went over to Rouen, England was as full of hatred
against him, as if every leaf on every tree in all his Royal
Forests had been a curse upon his head. In the New Forest,
his son Richard (for he had four sons), had been gored to death
by a Stag ; and the people said that this so cruelly-made Forest
would yet be fatal to others of the Conqueror's race.
He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France about
some territory. While he stayed at Rouen, negotiating with
that King, he kept his bed and took medicines : being advised
by his physicians to do so, on account of having grown to an
unwieldy size. Word being brought to him that the King of
France made light of this, and joked about it, he swore in a
great rage that he should rue his jests. He assembled his army,
marched into the disputed territory, burnt — his old way ! — the
vines, the crops, and fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire.
But, in an evil hour ; for, as he rode over the hot ruins, his horse,
setting his hoofs upon some burning embers, started, threw him
forward against the pommel of the saddle, and gave him a
mortal hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in a monastery near
Rouen, and then made his will, giving England to William,
Normandy to Robert, and five thousand pounds to Henry.
And now, his violent deeds lay heavy on his mind. He ordered
money to be given to many English churches and monasteries,
and — which was much better repentance — released his prisoners
of state, some of whom had been confined in his dungeons twenty
years.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 63
It was a September morning, and the sun was rising, when
the King was awakened from slumber by the sound of a church
bell. "What bell is that?" he faintly asked. They told him
it was the bell of the chapel of Saint Mary. " I commend my
soul," he said, " to Mary ! " and died.
Think of his name. The Conqueror, and then consider how
he lay in death ! The moment he was dead, his physicians,
priests, and nobles, not knowing what contest for the throne
might now take place, or what might happen in it, hastened
away, each man for himself and his own property ; the
mercenary servants of the court began to rob and plunder ;
the body of the King, in the indecent strife, was rolled from
the bed, and lay, alone, for hours, upon the ground. O
Conqueror, of whom so many great names are proud now, of
whom so many great names thought nothing then, it were
better to have conquered one true heart, than England !
By-and-by, the priests came creeping in with prayers and
candles ; and a good knight, named Herluin, undertook
(which no one else would do) to convey the body to Caen,
in Normandy, in order that it might be buried in St Stephen's
church there, which the Conqueror had founded. But fire, of
which he had made such bad use in his life, seemed to follow
him of itself in death. A great conflagration broke out in the
town when the body was placed in the church ; and those present
running out to extinguish the flames, it was once again left alone.
It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be let
down, in its Royal robes, into a tomb near the high altar, in
presence of a great concourse of people, when a loud voice in
the crowd cried out, "This ground is mine! Upon it, stood
my father's house. This king despoiled me of both ground
and house to build this church. In the great name of GOD,
I here forbid his body to be covered with the earth that is
my right!" The priests and bishops present, knowing the
speaker's right, and knowing that the king had often denied
him justice, paid him down sixty shillings for the grave. Even
then, the corpse was not at rest. The tomb was too small, and
they tried to force it in. It broke, a dreadful smell arose, the
people hurried out into the air, and, for the third time, it was
left alone.
64 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Where were the Conqueror's three sons, that they were not
at their father's burial ? Robert was lounging among minstrels,
dancers, and gamesters, in France or Germany. Henry was
carrying his five thousand pounds safely away in a convenient
chest he had got made. William the Red was hurrying to
England, to lay hands upon the Royal treasure and the crown.
CHAPTER IX
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS
William the Red, in breathless haste, secured the three great
forts of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and made with hot
speed for Winchester, where the Royal treasure was kept. The
treasurer delivering him the keys, he found that it amounted
to sixty thousand pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels.
Possessed of this wealth, he soon persuaded the Archbishop
of Canterbury to crown him, and became William the Second,
King of England.
Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he ordered into
prison again the unhappy state captives whom his father had
set free, and directed a goldsmith to ornament his father's
tomb profusely with gold and silver. It would have been
more dutiful in him to have attended the sick Conquerer when
he was dying ; but England, itself, like this Red King, who
once governed it, has sometimes made expensive tombs for
dead men whom it treated shabbily when they were alive.
The King's brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming quite
content to be only Duke of that country ; and the King's
other brother, Fine-Scholar, being quiet enough with his five
thousand pounds in a chest ; the King flattered himself, we
may suppose, with the hope of an easy reign. But easy reigns
were difficult to have in those days. The turbulent Bishop Odo
(who had blessed the Norman army at the Battle of Hastings,
and who, I dare say, took all the credit of the victory to himself)
soon began, in concert with some powerful Norman nobles, to
trouble the Red King.
The truth seems to be that this bishop and his friends, who
WILLIAM THE SECOND 65
had lands in England and lands in Normandy, wished to hold
both under one Sovereign ; and greatly preferred a thoughtless
good-natured person, such as Robert was, to Rufus;.who,
though far from being an amiable man in any respect, was
keen, and not to be imposed upon. They declared in Robert's
favour, and retired to their castles (those castles were very
troublesome to kings) in a sullen humour. The Red King,
seeing the Normans thus falling from him, revenged himself
upon them by appealing to the English ; to whom he made
a variety of promises, which he never meant to perform — in
particular, promises to soften the cruelty of the Forest Laws ;
and who, in return, so aided him with their valour, that
Odo was besieged in the Castle of Rochester, and forced to
abandon it, and to depart from England for ever : whereupon
the other rebellious Norman nobles were soon reduced and
scattered.
Then, the Red King went over to Normandy, where the
people suffered greatly under the loose rule of Duke Robert.
The King's object was to seize upon the Duke's dominions.
This, the Duke, of course, prepared to resist ; and miserable
war between the two brothers seemed inevitable, when the
powerful nobles on both sides; who had seen so much of war,
interfered ' to prevent it. A treaty was made. Each of the
two brothers agreed to give up something of his claims, and
that the longer-liver of the two should inherit all the dominions
of the other. When they had come to this loving under-
standing, they embraced and joined their forces against Fine-
Scholar, who had bought some territory of Robert with a part
of his five thousand pounds, and was considered a dangerous
individual in consequence.
St Michael's Mount, in Normandy (there is another St
Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, wonderfully like it), was then,
as it is now, a strong place perched upon the top of a high
rock, around which, when the tide is in, the sea flows, leaving
no road to the mainland. In this place, Fine-Scholar shut
himself up with his soldiers, and here he was closely besieged
by his two brothers. At one time, when he was reduced to
great distress for want of water, the generous Robert not only
permitted his men to get water, but sent Fine-Scholar wine
E
66 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
from his own table ; and, on being remonstrated with by the
Red King, said, " What ! shall we let our own brother die of
thirst? Where shall we get another, when he is gone?" At
another time, the Red King riding alone on the shore of the
bay, looking up at the Castle, was taken by two of Fine-
Scholar's men, one of whom was about to kill him, when he
cried out, " Hold, knave ! I am the King of England ! " The
story says that the soldier raised him from the ground respect-
fully and humbly, and that the King took him into his service.
The story may or may not be true ; but at any rate it is true
that Fine-Scholar could not hold out against his united brothers,
and that he abandoned Mount St Michael, and wandered about
— as poor and forlorn as other scholars have been sometimes
known to be.
The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King's time, and
were twice defeated — the second time, with the loss of their
King, Malcolm, and his son. The Welsh became unquiet too.
Against them, Rufus was less successful ; for they fought
among their native mountains, and did great execution on the
King's troops. Robert of Normandy became unquiet too ;
and, complaining that his brother the King did not faithfully
perform his part of their agreement, took up arms, and obtained
assistance from the King of France, whom Rufus, in the end,
bought off with vast sums of money. England became unquiet
too. Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl of Northumberland,
headed a great conspiracy to depose the King, and to place
upon the throne, Stephen, the Conqueror's near relative. The
plot was discovered ; all the chief conspirators were seized ;
some were fined, some were put in prison, some were put to
death. The Earl of Northumberland himself was shut up
in a dungeon beneath Windsor Castle, where he died, an old
man, thirty long years afterwards. The Priests in England
were more unquiet than any other class or power ; for the Red
King treated them with such small ceremony that he refused
to appoint new bishops or archbishops when the old ones died,
but kept all the wealth belonging to those offices in his own
hands. In return for this, the Priests wrote his life when he
was dead, and abused him well. I am inclined to think, myself,
that there was little to choose between the Priests and the Red
WILLIAM THE SECOND e']
King ; that both sides were greedy and designing ; and that
they were fairly matched.
The Red King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, and
mean. He had a worthy minister in his favourite, Ralph,
nicknamed — for almost every famous person had a nickname
in those rough days — Flambard, or the Firebrand. Once, the
King being ill, became penitent, and made Anselm, a foreign
priest and a good man, Archbishop of Canterbury. But he no
sooner got well again, than he repented of his repentance, and
persisted in wrongfully keeping to himself some of the wealth
belonging to the archbishopric. This led to violent disputes,
which were aggravated by there being in Rome at that time
two rival Popes ; each of whom declared he was the only real
original infallible Pope, who couldn't make a mistake. At last,
Anselm, knowing the Red King's character, and not feeling
himself safe in England, asked leave to return abroad. The
Red King gladly gave it ; for he knew that as soon as Anselm
was gone, he could begin to store up all the Canterbury money
again, for his own use.
By such means, and by taxing and oppressing the English
people in every possible way, the Red King became very rich.
When he wanted money for any purpose, he raised it by some
means or other, and cared nothing for the injustice he did, or
the misery he caused. Having the opportunity of buying from
Robert the whole duchy of Normandy for five years, he taxed
the English people more than ever, and made the very convents
sell their plate and valuables to supply him with the means to
make the purchase. But he was as quick and eager in putting
down revolt as he was in raising money ; for, a part of the
Norman people objecting — very naturally, I think — to being
sold in this way, he headed an army against them with all the
speed and energy of his father. He was so impatient, that he
embarked for Normandy in a great gale of wind. And when
the sailors told him it was dangerous to go to sea in such angry
weather, he replied, " Hoist sail and away ! Did you ever hear
of a king who was drowned ? "
You will wonder how it was that even the careless Robert
came to sell his dominions. It happened thus. It had long
been the custom for many English people to make journeys
68 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to Jerusalem, which were called pilgrimages, in order that they
might pray beside the tomb of Our Saviour there. Jerusalem
belonging to the Turks, and the Turks hating Christianity,
these Christian travellers were often insulted and ill used. The
Pilgrims bore it patiently for some time, but at length a re-
markable man, of great earnestness and eloquence, called Peter
THE Hermit, began to preach in various places against the
Turks, and to declare that it was the duty of good Christians
to drive away those unbelievers from the tomb of Our Saviour,
and to take possession of it, and protect it. An excitement
such as the world had never known before was created.
Thousands and thousands of men of all ranks and conditions
departed for Jerusalem to make war against the Turks. The
war is called in history the first Crusade ; and every Crusader
wore a cross marked on his right shoulder.
All the Crusaders were not zealous Christians. Among
them were vast numbers of the restless, idle, profligate, and
adventurous spirits of the time. Some became Crusaders for
the love of change ; some, in the hope of plunder ; some, because
they had nothing to do at home ; some, because they did what
the priests told them ; some, because they liked to see foreign
countries ; some, because they were fond of knocking men
about, and would as soon knock a Turk about as a Christian.
Robert of Normandy may have been influenced by all these
motives ; and by a kind desire, besides, to save the Christian
Pilgrims from bad treatment in future. He wanted to raise a
number of armed men, and to go to the Crusade. He could
not do so without money. He had no money ; and he sold his
dominions to his brother, the Red King, for five years. With
the large sum he thus obtained, he fitted out his Crusaders
gallantly, and went away to Jerusalem in martial state. The
Red King, who made money out of everything, stayed at home,
busily squeezing more money out of Normans and English.
After three years of great hardship and suffering — from
shipwreck at sea ; from travel in strange lands ; from hunger,
thirst, and fever, upon the burning sands of the desert; and
from the fury of the Turks — the valiant Crusaders got possession
of Our Saviour's tomb. The Turks were still resisting and
fighting bravely, but this success increased the general desire
WILLIAM THE SECOND 69
in Europe to join the Crusade. Another great French Duke
was proposing to sell his dominions for a term to the rich Red
King, when the Red King's reign came to a sudden and violent
end.
You have not forgotten the New Forest which the Conqueror
made, and which the miserable people whose homes he had laid
waste, so hated. The cruelty of the Forest Laws, and the
torture and death they brought upon the peasantry, increased
this hatred. The poor persecuted country people believed that
the New Forest was enchanted. They said that in thunder-
storms, and on dark nights, demons appeared, moving beneath
the branches of the gloomy trees. They said that a terrible
spectre had foretold to Norman hunters that the Red King
should be punished there. And now, in the pleasant season of
May, when the Red King had reigned almost thirteen years,
and a second Prince of the Conqueror's blood — another Richard,
the son of Duke Robert — was killed by an arrow in this dreaded
Forest, the people said that the second time was not the last,
and that there was another death to come.
It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people's hearts for the
wicked deeds that had been done to make it ; and no man save
the King and his Courtiers and Huntsmen, liked to stray there.
But, in reality, it was like any other forest. In the spring, the
green leaves broke out of the buds ; in the summer, flourished
heartily, and made deep shades ; in the winter, shrivelled and
blew down, and lay in brown heaps on the moss. Some trees
were stately, and grew high and strong ; some had fallen of
themselves ; some were felled by the forester's axe ; some were
hollow, and the rabbits burrowed at their roots ; some few were
struck by lightning, and stood white and bare. There were hill-
sides covered with rich fern, on which the morning dew so
beautifully sparkled ; there were brooks, where the deer went
down to drink, or over which the whole herd bounded, flying
from the arrows of the huntsmen ; there were sunny glades, and
solemn places where but little light came through the rustling
leaves. The songs of the birds in the New Forest were
pleasanter to hear than the shouts of fighting men outside ; and
even when the Red King and his Court came hunting through
its solitudes, cursing loud and riding hard, with a jingling of
70
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
stirrups and bridles and knives and daggers, they did much
less harm there than among the English or Normans, and the
stags died (as they lived) far easier than the people.
Upon a day in August, the Red King, now reconciled
to his brother, Fine-Scholar, came with a great train to hunt
in the New Forest. Fine-Scholar was of the party. They
DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS
were a merry party, and had lain all night at Malwood-Keep,
a hunting-lodge in the forest, where they had made good cheer,
both at supper and breakfast, and had drunk a deal of wine.
The party dispersed in various directions, as the custom of
hunters then was. The King took with him only SiR WALTER
Tyrrel, who was a famous sportsman, and to whom he had
given, before they mounted horse that morning, two fine arrows.
The last time the King was ever seen alive, he was riding
with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were hunting together.
HENRY THE FIRST 71
It was almost night, when a poor charcoal-burner, passing
through the forest with his cart, came upon the solitary body
of a dead man, shot with an arrow in the breast, and still
bleeding. He got it into his cart. It was the body of the
King, Shaken and tumbled, with its red beard all whitened
with lime and clotted with blood, it was driven in the cart by
the charcoal-burner next day to Winchester Cathedral, where
it was received and buried.
Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy, and claimed
the protection of the King of France, swore in France that the
Red King was suddenly shot dead by an arrow from an unseen
hand, while they were hunting together ; that he was fearful of
being suspected as the King's murderer ; and that he instantly
set spurs to his horse, and fled to the sea-shore. Others declared
that the King and Sir Walter Tyrrel where hunting in company,
a little before sunset, standing in bushes opposite one another,
when a stag came between them. That the King drew his bow
and took aim, but the string broke. That the King then cried,
" Shoot, Walter, in the Devil's name ! " That Sir Walter shot.
That the arrow glanced against a tree, was turned aside from
the stag, and struck the King from his horse, dead.
By whose hand the Red King really fell, and whether that
hand despatched the arrow to his breast by accident or by
design, is only known to GOD. Some think his brother may
have caused him to be killed ; but the Red King had made so
many enemies, both among priests and people, that suspicion
may reasonably rest upon a less unnatural murderer. Men
know no more than that he was found dead in the New Forest,
which the suffering people had regarded as a doomed ground
for his race.
CHAPTER X
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED
FINE-SCHOLAR
FiNE-SCHOLAR, on hearing of the Red King's death, hurried
to Winchester with as much speed as Rufus himself had made,
to seize the Royal treasure. But the keeper of the treasure,
72 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
who had been one of the hunting-party in the Forest, made
haste to Winchester too, and, arriving there at about the same
time, refused to yield it up. Upon this, Fine-Scholar drew his
sword, and threatened to kill the treasurer ; who might have
paid for his fidelity with his life, but that he knew longer
resistance to be useless when he found the Prince supported by
a company of powerful barons, who declared they were deter-
mined to make him King. The treasurer, therefore, gave up
the money and jewels of the Crown : and on the third day
after the death of the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar
stood before the high altar in Westminster Abbey, and made a
solemn declaration that he would resign the Church property
which his brother had seized ; that he would do no wrong to
the nobles ; and that he would restore to the people the laws
of Edward the Confessor, with all the improvements of William
the Conqueror. So began the reign of KING Henry the
First.
The people were attached to their new King, both because
he had known distresses, and because he was an Englishman
by birth and not a Norman. To strengthen this last hold
upon them, the King wished to marry an English lady; and
could think of no other wife than Maud the GOOD, the daughter
of the King of Scotland. Although this good Princess did not
love the King, she was so affected by the representations the
nobles made to her of the great charity it would be in her to unite
the Norman and Saxon races, and prevent hatred and blood-
shed between them for the future, that she consented to become
his wife. After some disputing among the priests, who said
that as she had been in a convent in her youth, and had worn
the veil of a nun, she could not lawfully be married — against
which the Princess stated that her aunt, with whom she had
lived in her youth, had indeed sometimes thrown a piece of
black stuff over her, but for no other reason than because the
nun's veil was the only dress the conquering Normans respected
in girl or woman, and not because she had taken the vows of a
nun, which she never had — she was declared free to marry, and
was made King Henry's Queen. A good Queen she was ;
beautiful, kind-hearted, and worthy of a better husband than
the King.
HENRY THE FIRST
7i
For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though firm and
clever. He cared very little for his word, and took any means to
gain his ends. All this is shown in his treatment of his brother
Robert — Robert, who had suffered him to be refreshed with
water, and who had sent him the wine from his own table, when
he was shut up, with the crows flying below him, parched with
thirst, in the castle on the top of St Michael's Mount, where his
Red brother would have let him die.
Before the King began to deal with Robert, he removed and
disgraced all the favourites of the late King ; who were for the
most part base characters, much detested by the people.
Flambard, or Firebrand, whom the late King had made Bishop
of Durham, of all things in the world, Henry imprisoned in the
Tower ; but Firebrand was a great joker and a jolly companion,
and made himself so popular with his guards that they pre-
tended to know nothing about a long rope that was sent into
his prison at the bottom of a deep flagon of wine. The guards
took the wine, and Firebrand took the rope ; with which, when
they were fast asleep, he let himself down from a window in the
night, and so got cleverly aboard ship and away to Normandy.
Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to the
throne, was still absent in the Holy Land. Henry pretended
that Robert had been made Sovereign of that country ; and he
had been away so long, that the ignorant people believed it.
But, behold, when Henry had been some time King of England,
Robert came home to Normandy ; having leisurely returned
from Jerusalem through Italy, in which beautiful country he had
enjoyed himself very much, and had married a lady as beautiful
as itself! In Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge
him to assert his claim to the English crown, and declare war
against King Henry. This, after great loss of time in feasting
and dancing with his beautiful Italian wife among his Norman
friends, he at last did.
The English in general were on King Henry's side, though
many of the Normans were on Robert's. But the English
sailors deserted the King, and took a great part of the English
fleet over to Normandy ; so that Robert came to invade this
country in no foreign vessels, but in English ships. The
virtuous Anselm, however, whom Henry had invited back from
74 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
abroad, and made Archbishop of Canterbury, was steadfast in
the King's cause ; and it was so well supported that the two
armies, instead of fighting, made a peace. Poor Robert, who
trusted anybody and everybody, readily trusted his brother, the
King; and agreed to go home and receive a pension from
England, on condition that all his followers were fully pardoned.
This the King very faithfully promised, but Robert was no
sooner gone than he began to punish them.
Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on being
summoned by the King to answer to iive-and-forty accusations,
rode away to one of his strong castles, shut himself up therein,
called around him his tenants and vassals, and fought for his
liberty, but was defeated and banished. Robert, with all his
faults, was so true to his word, that when he first heard of this
nobleman having risen against his brother, he laid waste the
Earl of Shrewsbury's estates in Normandy, to show the King
that he would favour no breach of their treaty. Finding, on
better information, afterwards, that the Earl's only crime was
having been his friend, he came over to England, in his old
thoughtless warm-hearted way, to intercede with the King,
and remind him of the solemn promise to pardon all his
followers.
This confidence might have put the false King to the blush,
but it did not. Pretending to be very friendly, he so surrounded
his brother with spies and traps, that Robert, who was quite in
his power, had nothing for it but to renounce his pension and
escape while he could. Getting home to Normandy, and under-
standing the King better now, he naturally allied himself with
his old friend the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had still thirty
castles in that country. This was exactly what Henry wanted.
He immediately declared that Robert had broken the treaty,
and next year invaded Normandy.
He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at their
own request, from his brother's misrule. There is reason to
fear that his misrule was bad enough ; for his beautiful wife had
died, leaving him with an infant son, and his court was again
so careless, dissipated, and ill-regulated, that it was said he
sometimes lay in bed of a day for want of clothes to put on —
his attendants having stolen all his dresses. But he headed his
HENRY THE FIRST 75
army like a brave prince and a gallant soldier, though he had
the misfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with four
hundred of his Knights. Among them was poor harmless
Edgar Atheling, who loved Robert well. Edgar was not
important enough to be severe with. The King afterwards
gave him a small pension, which he lived upon and died upon,
in peace, among the quiet woods and fields of England.
And Robert — poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless Robert,
with so many faults, and yet with virtues that might have made
a better and a happier man — what was the end of him ? If the
King had had the magnanimity to say with a kind air, " Brother,
tell me, before these noblemen, that from this time you will be
my faithful follower and friend, and never raise your hand
against me or my forces more ! " he might have trusted Robert
to the death. But the King was not a magnanimous man.
He sentenced his brother to be confined for life in one of the
Royal Castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment, he was
allowed to ride out, guarded ; but he one day broke away from
his guard and galloped off". He had the evil fortune to ride
into a swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he was taken.
When the King heard of it, he ordered him to be blinded, which
was done by putting a red-hot metal basin on his eyes.
And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he thought
of all his past life, of the time he had wasted, of the treasure he
had squandered, of the opportunities he had lost, of the youth
he had thrown away, of the talents he had neglected. Some-
times, on fine autumn mornings, he would sit and think of the
old hunting parties in the free Forest, where he had been the
foremost and the gayest. Sometimes, in the still nights, he
would wake, and mourn for the many nights that had stolen
past him at the gaming-table ; sometimes, would seem to hear,
upon the melancholy wind, the old songs of the minstrels ;
sometimes, would dream, in his blindness, of the light and glitter
of the Norman Court. Many and many a time, he groped back,
in his fancy, to Jerusalem, where he had fought so well ; or, at
the head of his brave companions, bowed his feathered helmet
to the shouts of welcome greeting him in Italy, and seemed
again to walk among the sunny vineyards, or on the shore of
the blue sea, with his lovely wife. And then, thinking of her
^6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
grave, and of his fatherless boy, he would stretch out his solitary
arms and weep.
At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, with cruel_ and
disfiguring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from his jailer's
sight, but on which the eternal Heavens looked down, a worn
old man of eighty. He had once been Robert of Normandy.
Pity him !
At the time when Robert of Normandy was taken prisoner
by his brother, Robert's little son was only five years old. This
child was taken, too, and carried before the King, sobbing and
crying ; for, young as he was, he knew he had good reason to
be afraid of his Royal uncle. The King was not much accus-
tomed to pity those who were in his power, but his cold heart
seemed for the moment to soften towards the boy. He was
observed to make a great effort, as if to prevent himself from
being cruel, and ordered the child to be taken away ; whereupon
a certain Baron, who had married a daughter of Duke Robert's
(by name, Helie of Saint Saen), took charge of him, tenderly.
The King's gentleness did not last long. Before two years
were over, he sent messengers to this lord's Castle to seize the
child and bring him away. The Baron was not there at the
time, but his servants were faithful, and carried the boy off in
his sleep and hid him. When the Baron came home, and was
told what the King had done, he took the child abroad, and,
leading him by the hand, went from King to King and from
Court to Court, relating how the child had a claim to the throne
of England, and how his uncle the King, knowing that he had
that claim, would have murdered him, perhaps, but for his
escape.
The youth and innocence of the pretty little WiLLlAM FlTZ-
ROBERT (for that was his name) made him many friends at that
time. When he became a young man, the King of France,
uniting with the French Counts of Anjou and Flanders, supported
his cause against the King of England, and took many of the
King's towns and castles in Normandy. But, King Henry,
artful and cunning always, bribed some of William's friends
with money, some with promises, some with power. He bought
off the Count of Anjou, by promising to marry his eldest
son, also named WILLIAM, to the Count's daughter ; and indeed
HENRY THE FIRST tj
the whole trust of this King's life was in such bargains, and he
believed (as many another King has done since, and as one
King did in France a very little time ago) that every man's
truth and honour can be bought at some price. For all this, he
was so afraid of William Fitz-Robert and his friends, that, for a
long time, he believed his life to be in danger ; and never lay
down to sleep, even in his palace surrounded by his guards,
without having a sword and buckler at his bedside.
To strengthen his power, the King with great ceremony
betrothed his eldest daughter Matilda, then a child only eight
years old, to be the wife of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of
Germany. To raise her marriage-portion, he taxed the English
people in a most oppressive manner ; then treated them to a
great procession, to restore their good humour ; and sent Matilda
away, in fine state, with the German ambassadors, to be educated
in the country of her future husband.
And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. It
was a sad thought for that gentle lady, that the only hope with
which she had married a man whom she had never loved — the
hope of reconciling the Norman and English races — had failed.
At the very time of her death, Normandy and all France was
in arms against England ; for, so soon as his last danger was
over, King Henry had been false to all the French powers he
had promised, bribed, and bought, and they had naturally
united against him. After some fighting, however, in which
few suffered but the unhappy common people (who always
suffered, whatsoever was the matter), he began to promise,
bribe, and buy again ; and by those means, and by the help of
the Pope, who exerted himself to save more bloodshed, and by
solemnly declaring, over and over again, that he really was in
earnest this time, and would keep his word, the King made
peace.
One of the first consequences of this peace was, that the
King went over to Normandy with his son Prince William and
a great retinue, to have the Prince acknowledged as his successor
by the Norman nobles, and to contract the promised marriage
(this was one of the many promises the King had broken)
between him and the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both
these things were triumphantly done, with great show and
78 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
rejoicing ; and on the twenty-fifth of November, in the year one
thousand one hundred and twenty, the whole retinue prepared
to embark at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home.
On that day, and at that place, there came to the King, Fitz-
Stephen, a sea-captain, and said :
" My liege, my father served your father all his life, upon
the sea. He steered the ship with the golden boy upon the
prow, in which your father sailed to conquer England. I
beseech you to grant me the same office. I have a fair vessel
in the harbour here, called The White Ship, manned by fifty
sailors of renown. I pray you, Sire, to let your servant have
the honour of steering you in The White Ship to England ! "
" I am sorry, friend," replied the King, " that my vessel is
already chosen, and that I cannot (therefore) sail with the son
of the man who served my father. But the Prince and all his
company shall go along with you, in the fair White Ship,
manned by the fifty sailors of renown."
An hour or two afterwards, the King set sail in the vessel
he had chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing all
night with a fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of
England in the morning. While it was yet night, the people in
some of those ships heard a faint wild cry come over the sea,
and wondered what it was.
Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched young man of
eighteen, who bore no love to the English, and had declared
that when he came to the throne he would yoke them to the
plough like oxen. He went aboard The White Ship, with one
hundred and forty youthful Nobles like himself, among whom
were eighteen noble ladies of the highest rank. All this gay
company, with their servants and the fifty sailors, made three
hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship.
" Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen," said the Prince,
" to the fifty sailors of renown ! My father the King has sailed
out of the harbour. What time is there to make merry here,
and yet reach England with the rest ? "
" Prince," said Fitz-Stephen, " before morning, my fifty and
The White Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in attendance
on your father the King, if we sail at midnight ! "
Then, the Prince commanded to make merry ; and the sailors
THE WHITE SHIP
HENRY THE FIRST 81
drank out the three casks of wine ; and the Prince and all the
noble company danced in the moonlight on the deck of The
White Ship.
When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of Barfleur, there
was not a sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set,
and the oars all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm.
The gay young nobles and the beautiful ladies, wrapped in
mantles of various bright colours to protect them from the cold,
talked, laughed, and sang. The Prince encouraged the fifty
sailors to row harder yet, for the honour of The White Ship.
Crash 1 A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. It
was the cry the people in the distant vessels of the King heard
faintly on the water. The White Ship had, struck upon a rock
— was filling — going down 1
Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some few
Nobles. " Push off," he whispered; " and row to the land. It is
not far, and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must die."
But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, the
Prince heard the voice of his sister Marie, the countess of
Perche, calling for help. He never in his life had been so good
as he was then. He cried in an agony, " Row back at any risk !
I cannot bear to leave her ! "
They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch
his sister, such numbers leaped in, that the boat was overset.
And in the same instant The White Ship went down.
Only two men floated. They both clung to the main yard
of the ship, which had broken from the mast, and now supported
them. One asked the other who he was ? He said, " I am a
nobleman, GODREY by name, the son of Gilbert de l'Aigle.
And you ? " said he. " I am Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen, "
was the answer. Then, they said together, " Lord be merciful to
us both ! " and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in
the cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night.
By-and-by, another man came swimming towards them, whom
they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-
Stephen. "Where is the Prince?" said he. "Gone! Gone!"
the two cried together. " Neither he, nor his brother, nor his
sister, nor the King's niece, nor her brother, nor any one of all
the brave three hundred, noble or commoner, except we three, has
82 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
risen above the water ! " Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, cried,
" Woe ! woe, to me ! " and sunk to the bottom.
The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length
the young noble said faintly, " I am exhausted, and chilled with
the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend ! God
preserve you ! " So, he dropped and sunk ; and of all the brilliant
crowd, the poor Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the
morning, some fishermen saw him floating in his sheep-skin
coat, and got him into their boat — the sole relater of the dismal
tale.
For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the
King. At length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who,
weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The
White Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to the
ground like a dead man, and never, never afterwards, was seen
to smile.
But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and
bought again, in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed
him, after all his pains (" The Prince will never yoke us to the
plough, now ! " said the English people), he took a second wife —
Adelais or Alice, a duke's daughter, and the Pope's niece.
Having no more children, however, he proposed to the Barons to
swear that they would recognise as his successor, his daughter
Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the
eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed
Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of
flowering broom (called Genet in French) in his cap for a feather.
As one false man usually makes many, and as a false Kino-, in
particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court, the Barons
took the oath about the succession of Matilda (and her children
after her), twice over, without in the least intending to keep it.
The King was now relieved from any remaining fears of William
Fitz- Robert, by his death in the Monastery of St Omer, in France,
at twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And as
Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the succession to
the throne secure.
He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled
by family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he
had reigned upwards of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven
MATILDA AND STEPHEN 83
years old, he died of an indigestion and fever, brought on by
eating, when he was far from well, of a fish called Lamprey,
against which he had often been cautioned by his physicians. His
remains were brought over to Reading Abbey to be buried.
You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-breaking of
King Henry the First, called " policy " by some people, and
" diplomacy " by others. Neither of these fine words will in the
least mean that it was true ; aud nothing that is not true can
possibly be good.
His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning.
I should have given him greater credit even for that, if it had
been strong enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain
poet he once took prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he
ordered the poet's eyes to be torn from his head, because he had
laughed at him in his verses ; and the poet, in the pain of that
torture, dashed out his own brains against his prison wall. King
Henry the First was avaricious, revengeful, and so false, that I
suppose a man never lived whose word was less to be relied upon.
CHAPTER XI
ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN
The King was no sooner dead, than all the plans and schemes
he had laboured at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled
away like a hollow heap of sand. STEPHEN, whom he had
never mistrusted or suspected, started up to claim the throne.
Stephen was the sun of Adela, the Conqueror's daughter,
married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother
Henry, the late King had been liberal ; making Henry Bishop
of Winchester, and finding a good marriage for Stephen, and
much enriching him. This did not prevent Stephen from
hastily producing a false witness, a servant of the late King, to
swear that the King had named him for his heir upon his death-
bed. On this evidence the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned
him. The new King, so suddenly made, lost not a moment in
seizing the Royal treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers with some
of it to protect his throne.
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
MATILDA ESCAPING FROM OXFORD
If the dead King had even done as the false witness said, he
would have had small right to will away the English people,
like so many sheep or oxen, without their consent. But he
had, in fact, bequeathed all his territory to Matilda; who,
supported by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, soon began to dis-
pute the crown. Some of the powerful barons and priests took
her side ; some took Stephen's ; all fortified their castles ; and
again the miserable English people were involved in war, from
which they could never derive advantage whosoever was
victorious, and in which all parties plundered, tortured, starved,
and ruined them.
Five years had passed since the death of Henry the First —
and during those five years there had been two terrible invasions
by the people of Scotland under their King, David, who was at
last defeated with all his army — when Matilda, attended by her
brother Robert and a large force, appeared in England to
maintain her claim. A battle was fought between her troops and
King Stephen's at Lincoln ; in which the King himself was
taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until his battle-axe and
sword were broken, and was carried into strict confinement at
Gloucester. Matilda then submitted herself to the Priests, and
the Priests crowned her Queen of England.
She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of London
MATILDA AND STEPHEN 85
had a great afifection for Stephen ; many of the Barons con-
sidered it degrading to be ruled by a woman ; and the Queen's
temper was so haughty that she made innumerable enemies.
The people of London revolted ; and, in alliance with the
troops of Stephen, beseiged her at Winchester, where they took
her brother Robert prisoner, whom, as her best soldier and chief
general, she was glad to exchange for Stephen himself, who thus
regained his liberty. Then, the long war went on afresh. Once,
she was pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in the winter
weather when the snow lay thick upon the ground, that her
only chance of escape was to dress herself all in white, and,
accompanied by no more than three faithful Knights, dressed in
like manner that their figures might not be seen from Stephen's
camp as they passed over the snow, to steal away on foot, cross
the frozen Thames, walk a long distance, and at last gallop
away on horseback. All this she did, but to no great purpose
then ; for her brother dying while the struggle was yet going
on, she at last withdrew to Normandy.
In two or three years after her withdrawal, her cause
appeared in England, afresh, in the person of her son Henry,
young Plantagenet, who, at only eighteen years of age, was very
powerful : not only on account of his mother having resigned all
Normandy to him, but also from his having married ELEANOR,
the divorced wife of the French King, a bad woman, who had
great possessions in France. Louis, the French King, not
relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace, King Stephen's
son, to invade Normandy : but Henry drove their united forces
out of that country, and then returned here, to assist his
partisans, whom the King was then besieging at Wallingford
upon the Thames. Here, for two days, divided only by the
river, the two armies lay encamped opposite to one another —
on the eve, as it seemed to all men, of another desperate fight,
when the Earl of Arundel took heart and said, " that it was
not reasonable to prolong the unspeakable miseries of two
kingdoms, to minister to the ambition of two princes."
Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this when
it was once uttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet went down,
each to his own bank of the river, and held a conversation
across it, in which they arranged a truce ; very much to the
86 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swaggered away with some
followers, and laid violent hands on the Abbey of St Edmund's-
Bury, where he presently died mad. The truce led to a
solemn council at Winchester, in which it was agreed that
Stephen should retain the crown, on condition of his declaring
Henry his successor ; that WILLIAM, another son of the King's,
should inherit his father's rightful possessions ; and that all the
Crown lands which Stephen had given away should be recalled,
and all the Castles he had permitted to be built, demolished.
Thus terminated the bitter war, which had now lasted fifteen
years, and had again laid England waste. In the next year
Stephen died, after a troubled reign of nineteen years.
Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he lived,
a humane and moderate man, with many excellent qualities ;
and although nothing worse is known of him than his usurpation
of the Crown, which he probably excused to himself by the
consideration that King Henry the First was an usurper too —
which was no excuse at all; the people of England suffered
more in these dread nineteen years, than at any former period
even of their suffering history. In the division of the nobility
between the two rival claimants of the Crown, and in the growth
of what is called the Feudal System (which made the peasants
the born vassals and mere slaves of the Barons), every Noble
had his strong Castle, where he reigned the cruel king of all the
neighbouring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated whatever
cruelties he chose. And never were worse cruelties committed
upon earth, than in wretched England in those nineteen years.
The writers who were living then describe them fearfully.
They say that the castles were filled with devils, rather than
with men ; that the peasants, men and women, were put into
dungeons for their gold and silver, were tortured with fire and
smoke, were hung up by the thumbs, were hung up by the heels
with great weights to their heads, were torn with jagged irons,
killed with hunger, broken to death in narrow chests filled with
sharp-pointed stones, murdered in countless fiendish ways. In
England there was no corn, no meat, no cheese, no butter, there
were no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of burnt towns, and
dreary wastes, were all that the traveller, fearful of the robbers
who prowled abroad at all hours, would see in a long day's
HENRY THE SECOND 87
journey ; and from sunrise until night, he would not come upon
a home.
The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from pillage,
but many of them had castles of their own, and fought in helmet
and armour like the barons, and drew lots with other fighting
men for their share of booty. The Pope (or Bishop of Rome),
on King Stephen's resisting his ambition, laid England under
an Interdict at one period of this reign ; which means that he
allowed no service to be performed in the churches, no couples to
be married, no bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be buried.
Any man having the power to refuse these things, no matter
whether he were called a Pope or a Poulterer, would, of course,
have the power of afflicting numbers of innocent people. That
nothing might be wanting to the miseries of King Stephen's
time, the Pope threw in this contribution to the public store —
not very like the widow's contribution, as I think, when Our
Saviour sat in Jerusalem over-against the Treasury, " and she
threw in two mites, which make a farthing."
CHAPTER XII
england under henry the second
Part the First
Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one years old,
quietly succeeded to the throne of England, according to his
agreement made with the late King at Winchester. Six weeks
after Stephen's death, he and his Queen, Eleanor, were crowned
in that city ; into which they rode on horseback in great state,
side by side, amidst much shouting and rejoicing, and clashing
of music, and strewing of flowers.
The reign of King Henry the Second began well. The King
had great possessions, and (what with his own rights, and what
with those of his wife) was lord of one-third part of France.
He was a young man of vigour, ability, and resolution, and
immediately applied himself to remove some of the evils which
had arisen in the last unhappy reign. He revoked all the grants
88 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
SARACEN LADY ENQUIRING FOR BECKET
of land that had been hastily made, on either side, during the
late struggles ; he obliged numbers of disorderly soldiers to
depart from England ; he reclaimed all the castles belonging to
the crown ; and he forced the wicked nobles to pull down their
own castles, to the number of eleven hundred, in which such
dismal cruelties had been inflicted on the people. The King's
brother, GEOFFREY, rose against him in France, while he was
so well employed, and rendered it necessary for him to repair
to that country ; where, after he had subdued and made a
friendly arrangement with his brother (who did not live long),
his ambition to increase his possessions involved him in a war
with the French King, Louis, with whom he had been on such
friendly terms just before, that to the French King's infant
daughter, then a baby in the cradle, he had promised one of
his little sons in marriage, who was a child of five years old.
However, the war came to nothing at last, and the Pope made
the two Kings friends again.
Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last reign, had gone
on very ill indeed. There were all kinds of criminals among
HENRY THE SECOND 89
them — murderers, thieves, and vagabonds ; and the worst of the
matter was, that the good priests would not give up the bad
priests to justice, when they committed crimes, but persisted in
sheltering and defending them. The King, well knowing that
there could be no peace or rest in England while such things
lasted, resolved to reduce the power of the clergy; and, when
he had reigned seven years, found (as he considered) a good
opportunity for doing so, in the death of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. "I will have for the new Archbishop," thought
the King, " a friend in whom I can trust, who will help me to
humble these rebellious priests, and to have them dealt with,
when they do wrong, as other men who do wrong are dealt
with." So, he resolved to make his favourite, the new Arch-
bishop ; and this favourite was so extraordinary a man, and
his story is so curious, that I must tell you all about him.
Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, named
Gilbert A Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and
was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated
him kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in
love with the merchant ; and who told him that she wanted to
become a Christian, and was willing to marry him if they could
fly to a Christian country. The merchant returned her love,
until he found an opportunity to escape, when he did not trouble
himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped with his servant
Richard, who had been taken prisoner along with him, and
arrived in England and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was
more loving than the merchant, left her father's house in disguise
to follow him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the
sea-shore. The merchant had taught her only two English
words (for I suppose he must have learnt the Saracen tongue
himself, and made love in that language), of which LONDON
was one, and his own name, GILBERT, the other. She went
among the ships, saying, " London ! London ! " over and over
again, until the sailors understood that she wanted to find an
English vessel that would carry her there ; so they showed her
such a ship, and she paid for her passage with some of her
jewels, and sailed away. Well ! The merchant was sitting in
his counting-house in London one day, when he heard a great
noise in the street; and presently Richard came running in
90 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
from the warehouse, with his eyes wide open and his breath
almost gone, saying, "Master, master, here is the Saracen lady!"
The merchant thought Richard was mad ; but Richard said,
" No, master ! As I live, the Saracen lady is going up and down
the city, calling Gilbert ! Gilbert ! " Then, he took the merchant
by the sleeve, and pointed out at window ; and there they saw
her among the gables and water-spouts of the dark dirty street, in
her foreign dress, so forlorn, surrounded by a wondering crowd,
and passing slowly along, calling Gilbert, Gilbert ! When the
merchant saw her, and thought of the tenderness she had shown
him in his captivity, and of her constancy, his heart was moved,
and he ran down into the street ; and she saw him coming, and
with a great cry fainted in his arms. They were married with-
out loss of time, and Richard (who was an excellent man)
danced with joy the whole day of the wedding ; and they all
lived happy ever afterwards.
The merchant and this Saracen lady had one son, Thomas
A Becket. He it was who became the Favourite of King
Henry the Second.
He had become Chancellor, when the King thought of
making him Archbishop. He was clever, gay, well educated,
brave ; had fought in several battles in France ; had defeated
a French knight in single combat, and brought his horse away
as a token of the victory. He lived in a noble palace, he was
the tutor of the young Prince Henry, he was served by one
hundred and forty knights, his riches were immense. The King
once sent him as his ambassador to France ; and the French
people, beholding in what state he travelled, cried out in the
streets, " How splendid must the King of England be, when this
is only the Chancellor ! " They had good reason to wonder at
the magnificence of Thomas a Becket, for, when he entered a
French town, his procession was headed by two hundred and fifty
singing boys ; then, came his hounds in couples ; then, eight
waggons, each drawn by five horses driven by five drivers : two
of the waggons filled with strong ale to be given away to the
people ; four, with his gold and silver plate and stately clothes ;
two, with the dresses of his numerous servants. Then, came
twelve horses, each with a monkey on his back ; then, a train of
people bearing shields and leading fine war-horses splendidly
HENRY THE SECOND 91
equipped ; then, falconers with hawks upon their wrists ; then,
a host of knights, and gentlemen, and priests ; then, the
Chancellor with his brilliant garments flashing in the sun, and
all the people capering and shouting with delight.
The King was well pleased with all this, thinking that it only
made himself the more magnificent to have so magnificent a
favourite ; but he sometimes jested with the Chancellor upon
his splendour too. Once, when they were riding together
through the streets of London in hard winter weather, they saw
a shivering old man in rags. " Look at the poor object ! " said
the King. " Would it not be a charitable act to give that aged
man a comfortable warm cloak ? " " Undoubtedly it would,"
said Thomas k Becket, " and you do well. Sir, to think of such
Christian duties." " Come ! " cried the King, " then give him
your cloak ! " It was made of rich crimson trimmed with
ermine. The King tried to pull it off, the Chancellor tried to
keep it on, both were near rolling from their saddles in the mud,
when the Chancellor submitted, and the King gave the cloak to
the old beggar : much to the beggar's astonishment, and much to
the merriment of all the courtiers in attendance. For, courtiers
are not only eager to laugh when the King laughs, but they
really do enjoy a laugh against a Favourite.
" I will make," thought King Henry the Second, " this
Chancellor of mine, Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canter-
bury. He will then be the head of the Church, and, being
devoted to me, will help me to correct the Church. He has
always upheld my power against the power of the clergy, and
once publicly told some bishops (I remember), that men of
the Church were equally bound to me with men of the sword.
Thomas a Becket is the man, of all other men in England, to
help me in my great design." So the King, regardless of all
objection, either that he was a fighting man, or a lavish man, or
a courtly man, or a man of pleasure, or anything but a likely
man for the oifice, made him Archbishop accordingly.
Now, Thomas k Becket was proud and loved to be famous.
He was already famous for the pomp of his life, for his riches,
his gold and silver plate, his waggons, horses, and attendants.
He could do no more in that way than he had done; and
being tired of that kind of fame (which is a very poor one), he
92 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
longed to have his name celebrated for something else.
Nothing, he knew, would render him so famous in the world, as
the setting of his utmost power and ability against the utmost
power and ability of the King. He resolved with the whole
strength of his mind to do it.
He may have had some secret grudge against the King
besides. The King may have offended his proud humour at
some time or other, for anything I know. I think it likely,
because it is a common thing for Kings, Princes, and other
great people, to try the tempers of their favourites rather
severely. Even the little affair of the crimson cloak must have
been anything but a pleasant one to a haughty man. Thomas
k Becket knew better than any one in England what the King
expected of him. In all his sumptuous life, he had never yet
been in a position to disappoint the King. He could take up
that proud stand now, as head of the Church ; and he deter-
mined that it should be written in history, either that he sub-
dued the King, or that the King subdued him.
So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole manner of
his life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, ate coarse
food, drank bitter water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered
with dirt and vermin (for it was then thought very religious to
be very dirty), flogged his back to punish himself, lived chiefly
in a little cell, washed the feet of thirteen poor people every
day, and looked as miserable as he possibly could. If he
had put twelve hundred monkeys on horseback instead of
twelve, and had gone in procession with eight thousand
waggons instead of eight, he could not have astonished the
people half so much as by this great change. It soon caused
him to be more talked about as an Archbishop than he had
been as a Chancellor.
The King was very angry ; and was made still more so,
when the new Archbishop, claiming various estates from the
nobles as being rightfully Church property, required the King
himself, for the same reason, to give up Rochester Castle, and
Rochester City too. Not satisfied with this, he declared that
no power but himself should appoint a priest to any Church in
the part of England over which he was Archbishop ; and when
a certain gentleman of Kent made such an ?ippointment, as
HENRY THE SECOND 93
he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas k Becket excom-
municated him.
Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told you of
at the close of the last chapter, the great weapon of the clergy.
It consisted in declaring the person who was excommunicated,
an outcast from the Church and from all religious offices ; and
in cursing him all over, from the top of his head to the sole of
his foot, whether he was standing up, lying down, sitting,
kneeling, walking, running, hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing,
sneezing, or whatever else he was doing. This unchristian
nonsense would of course have made no sort of difference to
the person cursed — who could say his prayers at home if he
were shut out of church, and whom none but GOD could judge
— but for the fears and superstitions of the people, who avoided
excommunicated persons, and made their lives unhappy. So,
the King said to the New Archbishop, " Take off this Excom-
munication from this gentleman of Kent." To which the
Archbishop replied, " I shall do no such thing."
The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire committed
a most dreadful murder, that aroused the horror of the whole
nation. The King demanded to have this wretch delivered up,
to be tried in the same court and in the same way as any other
murderer. The Archbishop refused, and kept him in the
Bishop's prison. The King, holding a solemn assembly in
Westminister Hall, demanded that in future all priests found
guilty before their Bishops of crimes against the law of the land,
should be considered priests no longer, and should be delivered
over to the law of the land for punishment. The Archbishop
again refused. The King required to know whether the clergy
would obey the ancient customs of the country ? Every priest
there, but one, said, after Thomas k Becket, " Saving my order."
This really meant that they would only obey those customs
when they did not interfere with their own claims ; and the
King went out of the Hall in great wrath.
Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they were
going too far. Though Thomas k Becket was otherwise as
unmoved as Westminister Hall, they prevailed upon him, for
the sake of their fears, to go to the King at Woodstock, and
promise to observe the ancient customs of the country, without
94 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
saying anything about his order. The King received this sub-
mission favourably, and summoned a great council of the clergy
to meet at the Castle of Clarendon, by Salisbury. But when
this council met, the Archbishop again insisted on the words
" saving my order ; " and he still insisted, though lords entreated
him, and priests wept before him and knelt to him, and an
adjoining room was thrown open, filled with armed soldiers of
the King, to threaten him. At length he gave way, for that
time, and the ancient customs (which included what the king
had demanded in vain) were stated in writing, and were signed
and sealed by the chief of the clergy, and were called the Con-
stitutions of Clarendon.
The quarrel went on, for all that. The Archbishop tried to
see the King. The King would not see him. The Archbishop
tried to escape from England. The sailors on the coast would
launch no boat to take him away. Then, he again resolved to
do his worst in opposition to the King, and began openly to
set the ancient customs at defiance.
The King summoned him before a great council at
Northampton, where he accused him of high treason, and
made a claim against him, which was not a just one, for an
enormous sum of money. Thomas k Becket was alone against
the whole assembly, and the very Bishops advised him to resign
his office and abandon his contest with the King. His great
anxiety and agitation stretched him on a sick-bed for two days,
but he was still undaunted. He went to the adjourned council,
carrying a great cross in his right hand, and sat down holding it
erect before him. The King angrily retired into an inner room.
The whole assembly angrily retired and left him there. But
there he sat. The bishops came out again in a body, and re-
nounced him as a traitor. He only said, " I hear ! " and sat
there still. They retired again into the inner room, and his trial
proceeded without him. By-and-by, the Earl of Leicester, heading
the barons, came out to read his sentence. He refused to hear
it, denied the power of the court, and said he would refer his
cause to the Pope. As he walked out of the hall, with the cross
in his hand, some of those present picked up rushes — rushes
were strewn upon the floors in those days by way of carpet —
and threw them at him. He proudly turned his head, and said
HENRY THE SECOND 95
that were he not Archbishop, he would chastise those cowards
with the sword he had known how to use in bygone days. He
then mounted his horse, and rode away, cheered and surrounded
by the common people, to whom he threw open his house that
night and gave a supper, supping with them himself. That
same night, he secretly departed from the town ; and so, travel-
ling by night and hiding by day, and calling himself " Brother
Dearman," got away, not without diiSculty, to Flanders.
The struggle still went on. The angry King took possession
of the revenues of the archbishopric, and banished all the
relations and servants of Thomas k Becket, to the number of
four hundred. The Pope and the French King both protected
him, and an abbey was assigned for his residence. Stimulated
by this support, Thomas a Becket, on a great festival day,
formally proceeded to a great church crowded with people,
and going up into the pulpit publicly cursed and excommuni-
cated all who had supported the Constitutions of Clarendon :
mentioning many English noblemen by name, and not distantly
hinting at the King of England himself.
When intelligence of this new affront was carried to the
King in his chamber, his passion was so furious that he tore
his clothes, and rolled like a madman on his bed of straw and
rushes. But he was soon up and doing. He ordered all the
ports and coasts of England to be narrowly watched, that no
letters of Interdict might be brought into the kingdom ; and
sent messengers and bribes to the Pope's palace at Rome.
Meanwhile, Thomas k Becket, for his part, was not idle at
Rome, but constantly employed his utmost arts in his own
behalf. Thus the contest stood, until there was peace between
France and England (which had been for some time at war),
and until the two children of the two Kings were married in
celebration of it. Then, the French King brought about a
meeting between Henry and his old favourite, so long his
enemy.
Even then, though Thomas a Becket knelt before the
King, he was obstinate and immovable as to those words
about his order. King Louis of France was weak enough in
his veneration for Thomas a Becket and such men, but this
was a little too much for him. He said that k Becket " wanted
96 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to be greater than the saints and better than St Peter," and
rode away from him with the King of England. His poor
French Majesty asked a Becket's pardon for so doing, however,
soon afterwards, and cut a very pitiful figure.
At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. There
was another meeting on French ground between King Henry
and Thomas a Becket, and it was agreed that Thomas k Becket
should be Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the customs
of former Archbishops, and that the King should put him in
possession of the revenues of that post. And now, indeed, you
might suppose the struggle at an end, and Thomas a Becket
at rest. No, not even yet. For Thomas a Becket hearing,
by some means, that King Henry, when he was in dread of
his kingdom being placed under an interdict, had had his
eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not only persuaded
the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York who had performed
that ceremony, and to excommunicate the Bishops who had
assisted at it, but sent a messenger of his own into England,
in spite of all the King's precautions along the coast, who
delivered the letters of excommunication into the Bishops'
own hands. Thomas k Becket then came over to England
himself, after an absence of seven years. He was privately
warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an ireful
knight, named Ranulf de Broc, had threatened that he should
not live to eat a loaf of bread in England ; but he came.
The common people received him well, and marched about
with him in a soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons
as they could get. He tried to see the young prince who had
once been his pupil, but was prevented. He hoped for some
little support among the nobles and priests, but found none.
He made the most of the peasants who attended him, and
feasted them, and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-
Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and
on Christmas Day preached in the Cathedral there, and told
the people in his sermon that he had come to die among them,
and that it was likely he would be murdered. He had no fear,
however — or, if he had any, he had much more obstinacy^for
he, then and there, excommunicated three of his enemies, of
whom Ranulf de Broc the ireful knight was one.
HENRY THE SECOND 97
As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their
sitting and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the
rest of it, it was very natural in the persons so freely excommu-
nicated to complain to the King. It was equally natural in
the King, who had hoped that this troublesome opponent was
at last quieted, to fall into a mighty rage when he heard of
these new affronts; and, on the Archbishop of York telling
him that he never could hope for rest while Thomas k Becket
lived, to cry out hastily before his court, " Have I no one here
who will deliver me from this man ? " There were four knights
present, who, hearing the King's words, looked at one another,
and went out.
The names of these knights were REGINALD FiTZURSE,
William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito ;
three of whom had been in the train of Thomas a Becket in
the old days of his splendour. They rode away on horseback,
in a very secret manner, and- on the third day after Christmas
Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from Canterbury,
which belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. They quietly
collected some followers here, in case they should need any;
and proceeding to Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four
knights and twelve men) before the Archbishop, in his own
house, at two o'clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed
nor spoke, but sat down on the floor in silence, staring at the
Archbishop.
Thomas k Becket said, at length, " What do you want ? "
" We want," said Reginald Fitzurse, " the excommunication
taken from the Bishops, and you to answer for your offences
to the King."
Thomas a Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the
clergy was above the power of the King. That it was not
for such men as they were, to threaten him. That if he were
threatened by all the swords in England, he would never yield.
"Then we will do more than threaten!" said the knights.
And they went out with the twelve men, and put on their
armour, and drew their shining swords, and came back.
His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred the
great gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter
it with their battle-axes ; but, being shown a window by which
G
98 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
they could enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed in that
way. While they were battering at the door, the attendants
of Thomas k Becket had implored him to take refuge in the
Cathedral ; in which, as a sanctuary or sacred place, they
thought the knights would dare to do no violent deed. He
told them, again and again, that he would not stir. Hearing
the distant voices of the monks singing the evening service,
however, he said it was now his duty to attend, and therefore,
and for no other reason, he would go.
There was a near way between his Palace and the Cathedral,
by some beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. He
went into the Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the
Cross carried before him as usual. When he was safely there,
his servants would have fastened the door, but he said No ! it
was the house of God and not a fortress.
As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared in
the Cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there was
outside, on the dark winter evening. This knight said, in a
strong voice, " Follow me, loyal servants of the King ! " The
rattle of the armour of the other knights echoed through the
Cathedral, as they came clashing in.
It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately pillars
of the church, and there were so many hiding-places in the
crypt below and in the narrow passages above, that Thomas k
Becket might even at that pass have saved himself if he would.
But he would not. He told the monks resolutely that he
would not. And though they all dispersed and left him there
with no other follower than EDWARD Gryme, his faithful
cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as ever he had been in his
life.
The knights came on, through the darkness, making a
terrible noise with their armed tread upon the stone pavement
of the church. " Where is the traitor ? " they cried out. He
made no answer. But when they cried, " Where is the Arch-
bishop ? " he said proudly, " I am here ! " and came out of the
shade and stood before them.
The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid the
King and themselves of him by any other means. They told
hjm he must either fly or go with them. He said he would do
HENRY THE SECOND loi
neither ; and he threw William Tracy off with such force when
he took hold of his sleeve, that Tracy reeled again. By his
reproaches and his steadiness, he so incensed them, and ex-
asperated their fierce humour, that Reginald Fitzurse, whom he
called by an ill name, said, " Then die ! " and struck at his head.
But- the faithful Edward Gryme put out his arm, and there
received the main force of the blow, so that it only made his
master bleed. Another voice from among the knights again
called to Thomas k Becket to fly ; but, with his blood running
down his face, and his hands clasped, and his head bent,
he commended himself to God, and stood firm. Then they
cruelly killed him close to the altar of St Bennet; and his
body fell upon the pavement, which was dirtied with his blood
and brains.
It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal,
who had so showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in
the church, where a few lamps here and there were but red
specks on a pall of darkness ; and to think of the guilty
knights riding away on horseback, looking over their shoulders
at the dim Cathedral, and remembering what they had left
inside.
Part the Second
When the King heard how Thomas a Becket had lost his life
in Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of the four
Knights, he was filled with dismay. Some have supposed
that when the King spoke those hasty words, " Have I no one
here who will deliver me from this man ? " he wished, and meant
a Becket to be slain. But few things are more unlikely ; for,
besides that the King was not naturally cruel (though very
passionate), he was wise, and must have known full well what
any stupid man in his dominions must have known, namely,
that such a murder would rouse the Pope and the whole Church
against him.
He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent his
innocence (except in having uttered the hasty words) ; and he
swore solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and contrived
in time to make his peace. As to the four guilty Knights,
102 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
who fled into Yorkshire, and never again dared to show them-
selves at Court, the Pope excommunicated them ; and they
lived miserably for some time, shunned by all their countrymen.
At last, they went humbly to Jerusalem as a penance, and
there died and were buried.
It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that
an opportunity arose very soon after the murder of a Becket,
for the King to declare his power in Ireland — which was an
acceptable undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, who had been
converted to Christianity by one Patricius (otherwise Saint
Patrick) long ago, before any Pope existed, considered that the
Pope had nothing at all to do with them, or they with the Pope,
and accordingly refused to pay him Peter's Pence, or that tax
of a penny a house which I have elsewhere mentioned. The
King's opportunity arose in this way.
The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you
can well imagine. They were continually quarrelling and
fighting, cutting one another's throats, slicing one another's
noses, burning one another's houses, carrying away one another's
wives, and committing all sorts of violence. The country was
divided into five kingdoms— Desmond,Thomond,Connaught,
Ulster, and Leinster, — each governed by a separate King,
of whom one claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, one of
these Kings, named Dermond Mac Murrough (a wild kind
of name, spelt in more than one wild kind of way), had carried
ofi" the wife of a friend of his, and concealed her on an island
in a bog. The friend resenting this (though it was quite the
custom of the country), complained to the chief King, and, with
the chief King's help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of
his dominions. Dermond came over to England for revenge ;
and offered to hold his realm as a vassal of King Henry, if
King Henry would help him to regain it. The King consented
to these terms ; but only assisted him, then, with what were
called Letters Patent, authorising any English subjects who
were so disposed, to enter into his service, and aid his cause.
There was, at Bristol, a certain EARL RICHARD DE Clare,
called Strongbow; of no very good character; needy and
desperate, and ready for anything that offered him a chance of
improving his fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two other
HENRY THE SECOND 103
broken knights of the same good-for-nothing sort, called
Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Maurice Fitz-Gerald, These
three, each with a small band of followers, took up Dermond's
cause ; and it was agreed that if it proved successful, Strongbow
should marry Dermond's daughter EvA, and be declared his
heir.
The trained English followers of these knights were so
superior in all the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they
beat them against immense superiority of numbers. In one
fight, early in the war, they cut off three hundred heads, and
laid them before Mac Murrough ; who turned them every one
up with his hands, rejoicing, and, coming to one which was the
head of a man whom he had much disliked, grasped it by the
hair and ears, and tore off the nose and lips with his teeth.
You may judge from this, what kind of a gentleman an Irish
King in those times was. The captives, all through this war,
were horribly treated ; the victorious party making nothing of
breaking their limbs, and casting them into the sea from the
tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the miseries and
cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where the dead
lay piled in the streets, and the filthy gutters ran with blood,
that Strongbow married Eva. An odious marriage-company
those mounds of corpses must have made, I think, and one
quite worthy of the young lady's father.
He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and
various successes achieved ; and Strongbow became King of
Leinster. Now came King Henry's opportunity. To restrain
the growing power of Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin,
as Strongbow's Royal Master, and deprived him of his kingdom,
but confirmed him in the enjoyment of great possessions. The
King, then, holding state in Dublin, received the homage of
nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, and so came home again
with a great addition to his reputation as Lord of Ireland, and
with a new claim on the favour of the Pope. And now, their
reconciliation was completed — more easily and mildly by the
Pope, than the King might have expected, I think.
At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so few
and his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began
which gradually made the King the most unhappy of men,
I04 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
reduced his great spirit, wore away his health, and broke his
heart.
He had four sons. HENRY, now aged eighteen — his secret
crowning of whom had given such offence to Thomas a Becket ;
Richard, aged sixteen ; Geoffrey, fifteen ; and John, his
favourite, a young boy whom the courtiers named LACKLAND,
because he had no inheritance, but to whom the King meant to
give the Lordship of Ireland. All these misguided boys, in
their turn, were unnatural sons to him, and unnatural brothers
to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the French King,
and by his bad mother. Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful
history.
First, he demanded that his young wife, MARGARET, the
French King's daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His
father, the King, consented, and it was done. It was no sooner
done, than he demanded to have a part of his father's dominions,
during his father's life. This being refused, he made off from
his father in the night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and
took refuge at the French King's Court. Within a day or two,
his brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried
to join them — escaping in man's clothes — but she was seized by
King Henry's men, and immured in prison, where she lay,
deservedly, for sixteen years. Every day, however, some
grasping English noblemen, to whom the King's protection of
his people from their avarice and oppression had given offence,
deserted him and joined the Princes. Every day he heard some
fresh intelligence of the Princes levying armies against him ; of
Prince Henry's wearing a crown before his own ambassadors at
the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England ;
of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him, their
father, without the consent and approval of the Barons of
France. But, with his fortitude and energy unshaken. King
Henry met the shock of these disasters with a resolved and
cheerful face. He called upon all Royal fathers who had sons,
to help him, for his cause was theirs ; he hired, out of his riches,
twenty thousand men to fight the false French King, who stirred
his own blood against him ; and he carried on the war with such
vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat for
peace.
HENRY THE SECOND 105
The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green
elm-tree, upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war
recommenced. Prince Richard began his fighting career, by
leading an army against his father ; but his father beat him and
his army back ; and thousands of his men would have rued the
day in which they fought in such a wicked cause, had not the
King received news of an invasion of England by the Scots,
and promptly come home through a great storm to repress it.
And whether he really began to fear that he suffered these
troubles because k Becket had been murdered ; or whether he
wished to rise in the favour of the Pope, who had now declared
k Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of his own people, of
whom many believed that even a Becket's senseless tomb could
work miracles, I don't know : but the King no sooner landed in
England than he went straight to Canterbury; and when he
came within sight of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted from
his horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and bleeding
feet to a Becket's grave. There, he lay down on the ground,
lamenting, in the presence of many people ; and by-and-by he
went into the Chapter House, and, removing his clothes from
his back and shoulders, submitted himself to be beaten with
knotted cords (not beaten very hard, I dare say though) by
eighty Priests, one after another. It chanced that on the very
day when the King made this curious exhibition of himself, a
complete victory was obtained over the Scots ; which very much
delighted the Priests, who said that it was won because of his
great example of repentance. For the Priests in general had
found out, since k Becket's death, that they admired him of all
things — though they had hated him very cordially when he was
alive.
The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base con-
spiracy of the King's undutiful sons and their foreign friends,
took the opportunity of the King being thus employed at home,
to lay seige to Rouen, the capital of Normandy. But the King,
who was extraordinarily quick and active in all his movements,
was at Rouen, too, before it was supposed possible that he could
have left England ; and there he so defeated the said Earl of
Flanders, that the conspirators proposed peace, and his bad
sons Henry and Geoffrey submitted. Richard resisted for six
io6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
weeks ; but, being beaten out of castle after castle, he at last
submitted too, and his father forgave him.
To forgive these unworthy princes was only to afford them
breathing-time for new faithlessness. They were so false, dis-
loyal, and dishonourable, that they were no more to be trusted
than common thieves. In the very next year. Prince Henry
rebelled again, and was again forgiven. In eight years more.
Prince Richard rebelled against his elder brother ; and Prince
Geoffrey infamously said that the brothers could never agree
well together, unless they were united against their father.
In the very next year after their reconciliation by the King,
Prince Henry again rebelled against his father ; and again
submitted, swearing to be true ; and was again forgiven ; and
again rebelled with Geoffrey.
But the end of this perfidious Prince was come. He fell
sick at a French town ; and his conscience terribly reproaching
him with his baseness, he sent messengers to the King his
father, imploring him to come and see him, and to forgive him
for the last time on his bed of death. The generous King,
who had a royal and forgiving mind towards his children
always, would have gone ; but this Prince had been so un-
natural, that the noblemen about the King suspected treachery,
and represented to him that he could not safely trust his life
with such a traitor, though his own eldest son. Therefore
the King sent him a ring from off his finger as a token of
forgiveness ; and when the Prince had kissed it, with much
grief and many tears, and had confessed to those around him
how bad, and wicked, and undutiful a son he had been, he
said to the attendant Priests : " O, tie a rope about my body,
and draw me out of bed, and lay me down upon a bed of
ashes, that I may die with prayers to God in a repentant
manner ! " And so he died, at twenty-seven years old.
Three years afterwards. Prince Geoffrey, being unhorsed at
a tournament, had his brains trampled out by a crowd of
horses passing over him. So, there only remained Prince
Richard, and Prince John — who had grown to be a young
man now, and had solemnly sworn to be faithful to his father.
Richard soon rebelled again, encouraged by his friend the
French King, PHILIP THE SECOND (son of Louis, who was
HENRY THE SECOND
107
dead) ; and soon submitted and was again forgiven, swearing
on the New Testament never to rebel again ; and, in another
year or so, rebelled again ; and, in the presence of his father,
knelt down on his knee before the King of France ; and did the
French King homage ; and declared that with his aid he would
possess himself, by force, of all his father's French dominions.
And yet this Richard called himself a soldier of Our Saviour!
And yet this Richard wore the Cross, which the Kings of France
and England had both taken, in the previous year, at a brotherly
meeting underneath the old wide-spreading elm-tree on the
plain, when they had sworn (like him) to devote themselves to
a new Crusade, for the love and honour of the Truth !
Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of his sons, and
almost ready to lie down and die, the unhappy King who had
so long stood firm, began to fail. But the Pope, to his honour,
supported him ; and obliged the French King and Richard,
though successful in fight, to treat for peace. Richard wanted
to be crowned King of England, and pretended that he wanted
to be married (which he really did not) to the French King's
sister, his promised wife, whom King Henry detained in England.
King Henry wanted, on the other hand, that the French King's
sister should be married to his favourite son, John : the only one
of his sons (he said) who had never rebelled against him. At
last King Henry, deserted by his nobles one by one, distressed,
exhausted, broken-hearted, consented to establish peace.
One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him even yet.
When they brought him the proposed treaty of peace, in writ-
ing, as he lay very ill in bed, they brought him also the list
of the deserters from their allegiance, whom he was required
to pardon. The first name upon this list was John, his favourite
son, in whom he had trusted to the last.
" O John ! child of my heart ! " exclaimed the King, in a
great agony of mind. " O John, whom I have loved the best !
O John, for whom I have contended through these many
troubles ! Have you betrayed me too ! " And then he lay
down with a heavy groan, and said, " Now let the world go as
it will. I care for nothing more ! "
After a time, he told his attendants to take him to the
French town of Chinon — a town he had been fond of, during
io8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
many years. But he was fond of no place now ; it was too
true that he could care for nothing more upon this earth. He
wildly cursed the hour when he was born, and cursed the children
whom he left behind him ; and expired.
As, one hundred years before, the servile followers of the
Court had abandoned the Conqueror in the hour of his death,
so they now abandoned his descendant. The very body was
stripped, in the plunder of the Royal chamber ; and it was
not easy to find the means of carrying it for burial to the
abbey church of Fontevraud.
Richard was said in after years, by way of flattery, to have
the heart of a Lion. It would have been far better, I think, to
have had the heart of a Man. His heart, whatever it was, had
cause to beat remorsefully within his breast, when he came —
as he did — into the solemn abbey, and looked on his dead
father's uncovered face. His heart, whatever it was, had been a
black and perjured heart, in all its dealings with the deceased
King, and more deficient in a single touch of tenderness than
any wild beast's in the forest.
There is a pretty story told of this Reign, called the story
of Fair Rosamond. It relates how the King doted on Fair
Rosamond, who was the loveliest girl in all the world ; and
how he had a beautiful Bower built for her in a park at
Woodstock ; and how it was erected in a labyrinth, and could
only be found by a clue of silk. How the bad queen Eleanor,
becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond, found out the secret of the
clue, and one day, appeared before her, with a dagger and a cup
of poison, and left her to the choice between those deaths. How
Fair Rosamond, after shedding many piteous tears and offering
many useless prayers to the cruel Queen, took the poison, and fell
dead in the midst of the beautiful bower, while the unconscious
birds sang gaily all around her.
Now, there was a Fair Rosamond, and she was (I dare say)
the loveliest girl in all the world, and the King was certainly very
fond of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made
jealous. But I am afraid — I say afraid, because I like the story
so much — that there was no bower, no labyrinth, no silken clue,
no dagger, no poison. I am afraid fair Rosamond retired to a
nunnery near Oxford, and died there, peaceably ; her sister-nuns
RICHARD THE FIRST 109
hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and often dressing it
with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and -beauty that had
enchanted the King when he too was young, and when his life
lay fair before him.
It was dark and ended now; faded and gone. Henry
Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church of Fontevraud, in the
fifty-seventh year of his age — never to be completed — after
governing England well, for nearly thirty-five years.
CHAPTER XIII
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE
LION-HEART
In the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty-
nine, Richard of the Lion Heart succeeded to the throne of King
Henry the Second, whose paternal heart he had done so much
to break. He had been, as we have seen, a rebel from his boy-
hood ; but, the moment he became a king against whom others
might rebel, he found out that rebellion was a great wickedness.
In the heat of this pious discovery, he punished all the leading
people who had befriended him against his father. He could
scarcely have done anything that would have been a better
instance of his real nature, or a better warning to fawners and
parasites not to trust in lion-hearted princes.
He likewise put his late father's treasurer in chains, and locked
him up in a dungeon from which he was not set free until he
had relinquished, not only all the Crown treasure, but all his own
money too. So, Richard certainly got the Lion's share of the
wealth of this wretched treasurer, whether he had a Lion's heart
or not.
He was crowned King of England, with great pomp, at
Westminster: walking to the Cathedral under a silken canopy
stretched on the top of four lances, each carried by a great lord.
On the day of his coronation, a dreadful murdering of the Jews
took place, which seems to have given great delight to numbers
of savage persons calling themselves Christians. The King
had issued a proclamation forbidding the Jews (who were
no A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
STOCKS — TWELFTH CENTURY
generally hated, though they were the most useful merchants in
England) to appear at the ceremony ; but as they had assembled
in London from all parts, bringing presents to show their respect
for the new Sovereign, some of them ventured down to West-
minster Hall with their gifts ; which were very readily accepted.
It is supposed, now, that some noisy fellow in the crowd, pretending
to be a very delicate Christian, set up a howl at this, and struck
a Jew who was trying to get in at the Hall door with his present.
A riot arose. The Jews who had got into the Hall, were driven
forth ; and some of the rabble cried out that the new King had
commanded the unbelieving race to be put to death. There-
upon the crowd rushed through the narrow streets of the city
slaughtering all the Jews they met; and when they could find
no more out of doors (on account of their having fled to their
houses, and fastened themselves in), they ran madly about,
breaking open all the houses where the Jews lived, rushing in
and stabbing or spearing them, sometimes even flinging old
people and children out of window into blazing fires they had
lighted up below. This great cruelty lasted four-and-twenty
RICHARD THE FIRST iii
hours, and only three men were punished for it. Even they
forfeited their lives not for murdering and robbing the Jews, but
for burning the houses of some Christians.
King Richard, who was a strong restless burly man, with one
idea always in his head, and that the very troublesome idea of
breaking the heads of other men, was mightily impatient to go
on a Crusade to the Holy Land, with a great army. As great
armies could not be raised to go, even to the Holy Land, with-
out a great deal of money, he sold the Crown domains, and even
the high offices of State ; recklessly appointing noblemen to rule
over his English subjects, not because they were fit to govern,
but because they could pay high for the privilege. In this way,
and by selling pardons at a dear rate, and by varieties of avarice
and oppression, he scraped together a large treasure. He then
appointed two Bishops to take care of his kingdom in his absence,
and gave great powers and possessions to his brother John, to
secure his friendship. John would rather have been made
Regent of England ; but he was a sly man, and friendly to the
expedition ; saying to himself, no doubt, " The more fighting,
the more chance of my brother being killed ; and when he is
killed, then I become King John ! "
Before the newly levied army departed from England, the
recruits and the general populace distinguished themselves by
astonishing cruelties on the unfortunate Jews ; whom, in many
large towns, they murdered by hundreds in the most horrible
manner.
At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in the Castle, in
the absence of its Governor, after the wives and children of many
of them had been slain before their eyes. Presently came the
Governor, and demanded admission. " How can we give it thee,
O Governor ! " said the Jews upon the walls, " when, if we open
the gate by so much as the width of a foot, the roaring crowd
behind thee will press in and kill us ? "
Upon this, the unjust Governor became angry, and told the
people that he approved of their killing those Jews; and a
mischievous maniac of a friar, dressed all in white, put himself
at the head of the assault, and they assaulted the Castle for
three days.
Then said JOCEN, the head Jew (who was a Rabbi or Priest),
112 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to the rest, " Brethren, there is no hope for us with the Christians
who are hammering at the gates and walls, and who must soon
break in. As we and our wives and children must die, either
by Christian hands, or by our own, let it be by our own. Let
us destroy by fire what jewels and other treasure we have here,
then fire the castle, and then perish ! "
A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater part
complied. They made a blazing heap of all their valuables,
and, when those were consumed, set the castle in flames.
While the flames roared and crackled around them, and
shooting up into the sky, turned it blood-red, Jocen cut the
throat of his beloved wife, and stabbed himself All the others
who had wives or children, did the like dreadful deed. When
the populace broke in, they found (except the trembling few,
cowering in corners, whom they soon killed) only heaps of
greasy cinders, with here and there something like part of the
blackened trunk of a burnt tree, but which had lately been a
human creature, formed by the beneficent hand of the Creator
as they were.
After this bad beginning, Richard and his troops went
on, in no very good manner, with the Holy Crusade. It was
undertaken jointly by the King of England and his old friend
Philip of France. They commenced the business by reviewing
their forces, to the number of one hundred thousand men.
Afterwards, they severally embarked their troops for Messina,
in Sicily, which was appointed as the next place of
meeting.
King Richard's sister had married the King of this place, but
he was dead : and his uncle Tancred had usurped the crown,
cast the Royal Widow into prison, and possessed himself of
her estates. Richard fiercely demanded his sister's release, the
restoration of her lands, and (according to the Royal custom
of the Island) that she should have a golden chair, a golden
table, four-and-twenty silver cups, and four-and-twenty silver
dishes. As he was too powerful to be successfully resisted,
Tancred yielded to his demands ; and then the French King
grew jealous, and complained that the English King wanted
to be absolute in the Island of Messina and everywhere else.
Richard, however, cared little or nothing for this complaint;
RICHARD THE FIRST 113
and in consideration of a present of twenty thousand pieces of
gold, promised his pretty little nephew Arthur, then a child
of two years old, in marriage to Tancred's daughter. We shall
hear again of pretty little Arthur by-and-by.
This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains being
knocked out (which must have rather disappointed him). King
Richard took his sister away, and also a fair lady named
Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in love in France,
and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor (so long in prison, you
remember, but released by Richard on his coming to the
Throne), had brought out there to be his wife ; and sailed with
them for Cyprus.
He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King of the Island
of Cyprus, for allowing his subjects to pillage some of the
English troops who were shipwrecked on the shore ; and easily
conquering this poor monarch, he seized his only daughter, to
be a companion to the lady Berengaria, and put the King him-
self into silver fetters. He then sailed away again with his
mother, sister, wife, and the captive princess ; and soon arrived
before the town of Acre, which the French King with his fleet
was besieging from the sea. But the French King was in no
triumphant condition, for his army had been thinned by the
swords of the Saracens, and wasted by the plague ; and
Saladin, the brave Sultan of the Turks, at the head of a
numerous army, was at that time gallantly defending the place
from the hills that rise above it.
Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they agreed in
few points except in gaming, drinking, and quarrelling, in a most
unholy manner; in debauching the people among whom they
tarried, whether they were friends or foes ; and in carrying dis-
turbance and ruin into quiet places. The French King was
jealous of the English King, and the English King was jealous
of the French King, and the disorderly and violent soldiers of
the two nations were jealous of one another ; consequently, the
two Kings could not at first agree, even upon a joint assault on
Acre ; but when they did make up their quarrel for that purpose,
the Saracens promised to yield the town, to give up to the
Christians the wood of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all their
Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces of
H
114 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
SARACEN ARCHER
gold. All this was to be done within forty days ; but, not being
done, King Richard ordered some three thousand Saracen
prisoners to be brought out in the front of his camp, and there,
in full view of their own countrymen, to be butchered.
The French King had no part in this crime ; for he was by
that time travelling homeward with the greater part of his men ;
being offended by the overbearing conduct of the English King ;
being anxious to look after his own dominions ; and being ill,
be^des, from the unwholesome air of that hot and sandy country.
King Richard carried on the war without him ; and remained in
the East, meeting with a variety of adventures, nearly a year
and a half. Every night when his army was on the march, and
came to a halt, the heralds cried out three times, to remind all
the soldiers of the cause in which they were engaged, "Save the
Holy Sepulchre 1 " and then all the soldiers knelt and said
" Amen ! " Marching or encamping, the army had continually
to strive with the hot air of the glaring desert, or with the
Saracen soldiers animated and directed by the brave Saladin,
or with both together. Sickness and death, battle and wounds,
were always among them; but through every difficulty King
Richard fought like a giant, and worked like a common labourer.
Long and long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible battle-
RICHARD THE FIRST 115
axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel in its mighty
head, was a legend among the Saracens ; and when all the
Saracen and Christian hosts had been dust for many a year, if
a Saracen horse started at any object by the wayside, his rider
would exclaim, " What dost thou fear. Fool ? Dost thou think
King Richard is behind it ? "
No one admired this King's renown for bravery more than
Saladin himself, who was a generous and gallant enemy. When
Richard lay ill of a fever, Saladin sent him fresh fruits from
Damascus, and snow from the mountain-tops. Courtly messages
and compliments were frequently exchanged between them —
and then King Richard would mount his horse and kill as many
Saracens as he could ; and Saladin would mount his, and kill as
many Christians as he could. In this way King Richard fought
to his heart's content at Arsoof and at Jaffa ; and finding himself
with nothing exciting to do at Ascalon, except to rebuild, for
his own defence, some fortifications there which the Saracens
had destroyed, he kicked his ally the Duke of Austria, for being
too proud to work at them.
The army at last came within sight of the Holy City
of Jerusalem ; but, being then a mere nest of jealousy, and
quarrelling and fighting, soon retired, and agreed with the
Saracens upon a truce for three years, three months, three days,
and three hours. Then, the English Christians, protected by
the noble Saladin from Saracen revenge, visited Our Saviour's
tomb ; and then King Richard embarked with a small force
at Acre to return home.
But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was fain to
pass through Germany, under an assumed name. Now, there
were many people in Germany who had served in the Holy
Land under that proud Duke of Austria who had been kicked ;
and some of them, easily recognising a man so remarkable as
King Richard, carried their intelligence to the kicked Duke,
who straightway took him prisoner at a little inn near Vienna.
The Duke's master, the Emperor of Germany, and the King
of France, were equally delighted to have so troublesome a
monarch in safe keeping. Friendships which are founded on a
partnership in doing wrong, are never true ; and the King of
France was now quite as heartily King Richard's foe, as he had
ii6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ever been his friend in his unnatural conduct to his father.
He monstrously pretended that King Richard had designed to
poison him in the East ; he charged him with having murdered,
there, a man whom he had in truth befriended ; he bribed the
Emperor of Germany to keep him close prisoner; and, finally,
through the plotting of these two princes, Richard was brought
before the German legislature, charged with the foregoing crimes,
and many others. But he defended himself so well, that many
of the assembly were moved to tears by his eloquence and
earnestness. It was decided that he should be treated, during
the rest of his captivity, in a manner more becoming his dignity
than he had been, and that he should be set free on the payment
of a heavy ransom. This ransom the English people willingly
raised. When Queen Eleanor took it over to Germany, it was
at first evaded and refused. But she appealed to the honour of
all the princes of the German Empire in behalf of her son, and
appealed so well that it was accepted, and the King released.
Thereupon, the King of France wrote to Prince John — " Take
care of thyself The devil is unchained ! "
Prince John had reason to fear his brother, for he had been
a traitor to him in his captivity. He had secretly joined the
French King; had vowed to the English nobles and people that
his brother was dead ; and had vainly tried to seize the crown.
He was now in France, at a place called Evreux. Being the
meanest and basest of men, he contrived a mean and base
expedient for making himself acceptable to his brother. He
invited the French officers of the garrison in that town to dinner,
murdered them all, and then took the fortress. With this
recommendation to the good will of a lion-hearted monarch, he
hastened to King Richard, fell on his knees before him, and
obtained the intercession of Queen Eleanor. " I forgive him,"
said the King, " and I hope I may forget the injury he has done
me, as easily as I know he will forget my pardon."
While King Richard was in Sicily, there had been trouble in
his dominions at home : one of the bishops whom he had left in
charge thereof, arresting the other ; and making, in his pride
and ambition, as great a show as if he were King himself
But the King hearing of it at Messina, and appointing a new
Regency, this LONGCHAMP (for that was his name) had fled to
RICHARD THE FIRST 117
France in a woman's dress, and had there been encouraged and
supported by the French King. With all these causes of offence
against Philip in his mind, King Richard had no sooner been
welcomed home by his enthusiastic subjects with great display
and splendour, and had no sooner been crowned afresh at
Winchester, than he resolved to show the French King that the
Devil was unchained indeed, and made war against him with
great fury.
There was fresh trouble at home about this time, arising out
of the discontents of the poor people, who complained that they
were far more heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a
spirited champion in WiLLiAM FiTZ-OSBERT, called LONG-
BEARD. He became the leader of a secret society, comprising
fifty thousand men ; he was seized by surprise ; he stabbed the
citizen who first laid hands upon him ; and retreated, bravely
fighting, to a church, which he maintained four days, until he
was dislodged by fire, and run through the body as he came
out. He was not killed, though ; for he was dragged, half dead,
at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, and there hanged. Death
was long a favourite remedy for silencing the people's advocates ;
but as we go on with this history, I fancy we shall find them
diflficult to make an end of, for all that.
The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was still
in progress when a certain Lord named ViDOMAR, Viscount of
Limoges, chanced to find in his ground a treasure of ancient
coins. As the King's vassal, he sent the King half of it ; but
the King claimed the whole. The lord refused to yield the
whole. The King beseiged the lord in his castle, swore that he
would take the castle by storm, and hang every man of its
defenders on the battlements.
There was a strange old song in that part of the country, to
the effect that in Limoges an arrow would be made by which
King Richard would die. It may be that Bertrand de
GOURDON, a young man who was one of the defenders of the
castle, had often sung it or heard it sung of a winter night, and
remembered it when he saw, from his post upon the ramparts,
the King attended only by his chief officer riding below the
walls surveying the place. He drew an arrow to the head,
took steady aim, said between his teeth, " Now I pray God
ii8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
speed thee well, arrow ! " discharged it, and struck the King in
the left shoulder.
Although the wound was not at first considered dangerous,
it was severe enough to cause the King to retire to his tent, and
direct the assault to be made without him. The castle was
taken ; and every man of its defenders was hanged, as the
King had sworn all should be, except Bertrand de Gourdon,
who was reserved until the royal pleasure respecting him should
be known.
By that time unskilful treatment had made the wound mortal,
and the King knew that he was dying. He directed Bertrand
to be brought into his tent. The young man was brought there,
heavily chained. King Richard looked at him steadily. He
looked, as steadily, at the King.
" Knave I " said King Richard. " What have I done to thee
that thou shouldest take my life ? "
"What hast thou done to me?" replied the young man.
" With thine own hands thou hast killed my father and my two
brothers. Myself thou wouldest have hanged. Let me die now,
by any torture that thou wilt. My comfort is, that no torture
can save thee. Thou too must die ; and, through me, the world
is quit of thee ! "
Again the King looked at the young man steadily. Again
the young man looked steadily at him. Perhaps some remem-
brance of his generous enemy Saladin, who was not a Christian,
came into the mind of the dying King.
" Youth 1 " he said, " I forgive thee. Go unhurt ! "
Then, turning to the chief officer who had been riding in his
company when he received the wound, King Richard said :
" Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let
him depart."
He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed in his
weakened eyes to fill the tent wherein he had so often rested,
and he died. His age was forty-two ; he had reigned ten years.
His last command was not obeyed ; for the chief officer flayed
Bertrand de Gourdon alive, and hanged him.
There is an old tune yet known — a sorrowful air will some-
times outlive many generations of strong men, and even last
longer than battle-axes with twenty pounds of steel in the head
JOHN 121
— by which this King is said to have been discovered in his
captivity. Blondel, a favourite Minstrel of King Richard, as
the story relates, faithfully seeking his Royal master, went sing-
ing it outside the gloomy walls of many foreign fortresses and
prisons ; until at last he heard it echoed from within a dungeon,
and knew the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, " O Richard, O my
King!" You may believe it, if you like; it would be easy to
believe worse things. Richard was himself a Minstrel and a
Poet. If he had not been a Prince too, he might have been a
better man perhaps, and might have gone out of the world with
less bloodshed and waste of life to answer for.
CHAPTER XIV
ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND
At two-and-thirty years of age, JOHN became King of
England. His pretty little nephew Arthur had the best
claim to the throne ; but John seized the treasure, and made
fine promises to the nobility, and got himself crowned at West-
minster within a few weeks after his brother Richard's death.
I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been put upon
the head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if
England had been searched from end to end to find him out.
The French King, Philip, refused to acknowledge the right
of John to his new dignity, and declared in favour of Arthur.
You must not suppose that he had any generosity of feeling for
the fatherless boy ; it merely suited his ambitious schemes to
oppose the King of England. So John and the French King
went to war about Arthur.
He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years old.
He was not born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains
trampled out at the tournament ; and, besides the misfortune of
never having known a father's guidance and protection, he had
the additional misfortune to have a foolish mother (Constance
by name), lately married to her third husband. She took
Arthur, upon John's accession, to the French King, who pre-
tended to be very much his friend, and who made him a Knight,
122 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
THE MURDER OF PRINCE ARTHUR
and promised him his daughter in marriage ; but, who cared so
Httle about him in reality, that finding it his interest to make
peace with King John for a time, he did so without the least
consideration for the poor little Prince, and heartlessly sacrificed
all his interests.
Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly ; and
in the course of that time his mother died. But, the French
King then finding it his interest to quarrel with King John
again, again made Arthur his pretence, and invited the orphan
boy to court. " You know your rights. Prince," said the French
King, " and you would like to be a King. Is it not so ? "
" Truly," said Prince Arthur, " I should greatly like to be a
King ! " " Then," said Philip, " you shall have two hundred
gentlemen who are Knights of mine, and with them you shall
go to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which your
uncle, the usurping King of England, has taken possession.
I myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in Normandy."
Poor Arthur was so flattered and so grateful, that he signed
a treaty with the crafty French King, agreeing to consider him
his superior Lord, and that the French King should keep for
himself whatever he could take from King John.
Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip
JOHN 123
was so perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, might as well
have been a lamb between a fox and a wolf. But, being so
young, he was ardent and flushed with hope ; and, when the
people of Brittany (which was his inheritance) sent him five
hundred more knights and five thousand foot soldiers, he be-
lieved his fortune was made. The people of Brittany had been
fond of him from his birth, and had requested that he might be
called Arthur, in remembrance of that dimly-famous English
Arthur, of whom I told you early in this book, whom they
believed to have been the brave friend and companion of an
old King of their own. They had tales among them about a
prophet called Merlin (of the same old time), who had fore-
told that their own King should be restored to them after
hundreds of years ; and they believed that the prophecy would
be fulfilled in Arthur ; that the time would come when he would
rule them with a crown of Brittany upon his head ; and when
neither King of France nor King of England would have any
power over them. When Arthur found himself riding in a
glittering suit of armour on a richly caparisoned horse, at the
head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began to believe
this too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior prophet.
He did not know — how could he, being so innocent and
inexperienced ? — that his little army was a mere nothing against
the power of the King of England. The French King knew it ;
but the poor boy's fate was little to him, so that the King of
England was worried and distressed. Therefore King Philip
went his way into Normandy, and Prince Arthur went his way
towards Mirebeau, a French town near Poictiers, both very well
pleased.
Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, because
his grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made her appear-
ance in this history (and who had always been his mother's
enemy), was living there, and because his Knights said, " Prince,
if you can take her prisoner, you will be able to bring the King,
your uncle, to terms ! " But she was not to be easily taken.
She was old enough by this time — eighty — but she was as full
of stratagem as she was full of years and wickedness. Receiv-
ing intelligence of young Arthur's approach, she shut herself
up in a high tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend it
124 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
like men. Prince Arthur with his little army besieged the high
tower. King John, hearing how matters stood, came up to the
rescue, with his army. So here was a strange family-party!
The boy-Prince besieging his grandmother, and his uncle
besieging him !
This 'position of affairs did not last long. One summer
night, King John, by treachery, got his men into the town,
surprised Prince Arthur's force, took two hundred of his knights,
and seized the Prince himself in his bed. The Knights were
put in heavy irons, and driven away in open carts drawn by
bullocks, to various dungeons where they were most inhumanly
treated, and where some of them were starved to death. Prince
Arthur was sent to the castle of Falaise.
One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mournfully
thinking it strange that one so young should be in so much
trouble, and looking out of the small window in the deep dark
wall, at the summer sky and the birds, the door was softly
Opened, and he saw his uncle the King standing in the shadow
of the archway, looking very grim.
" Arthur," said the King, with his wicked eyes more on the
stone floor than on his nephew, "will you not trust to the
gentleness, the friendship, and the truthfulness of your loving
uncle?"
" I will tell my loving uncle that," replied the boy, "when
he does me right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of
England, and then come to me and ask the question."
The King looked at him and went out. " Keep that boy a
close prisoner," said he to the warden of the castle.
Then, the King took secret counsel with the worst of his
nobles how the Prince was to be got rid of. Some said, " Put
out his eyes and keep him in prison, as Robert of Normandy
was kept." Others said, " Have him stabbed." Others, " Have
him hanged." Others, " Have him poisoned."
King John, feeling that in any case, whatever was done
afterwards, it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have those
handsome eyes burnt out that had looked at him so proudly
while his own royal eyes were blinking at the stone floor, sent
certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy with red-hot irons.
But Arthur so pathetically entreated them, and shed such
JOHN 125
piteous tears, and so appealed to HUBERT DE BOURG (or
Burgh), the warden of the castle, who had a love for him, and
was an honourable tender man, that Hubert could not bear it.
To his eternal honour he prevented the torture from being per-
formed, and, at his own risk, sent the savages away.
The chafed and disappointed King bethought himself of the
stabbing suggestion next, and, with his shuffling manner and his
cruel face, proposed it to one William de Bray. " I am a
gentleman and not an executioner," said William de Bray, and
left the presence with disdain.
But it was not difficult for a King to hire a murderer in
those days. King John found one for his money, and sent him
down to the castle of Falaise. " On what errand dost thou
come?" said Hubert to this fellow. "To despatch young
Arthur," he returned. "Go back to him who sent thee,"
answered Hubert, " and say that I will do it 1 "
King John very well knowing that Hubert would never do
it, but that he courageously sent this reply to save the Prince or
gain time, despatched messengers to convey the young prisoner
to the castle of Rouen.
Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert — of whom he
had never stood in greater need than then — carried away by
night, and lodged in his new prison : where, through his grated
window, he could hear the deep waters of the river Seine,
rippling against the stone wall below.
One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps of
rescue by those unfortunate gentlemen who were obscurely
suffering and dying in his cause, he was roused, and bidden by
his jailor to come down the staircase to the foot of the tower.
He hurriedly dressed himself and obeyed. When they came to
the bottom of the winding stairs, and the night air from the
river blew upon their faces, the jailor trod upon his torch and
put it out. Then, Arthur, in the darkness, was hurriedly drawn
into a solitary boat. And in that boat, he found his uncle and
one other man.
He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder him.
Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed him and sunk his body in
the river with heavy stones. When the spring morning broke,
the tower-door was closed, the boat was gone, the river sparkled
126 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
on its way, and never more was any trace of the poor boy beheld
by mortal eyes.
The news of this atrocious murder being spread in England,
awakened a hatred of the King (already odious for his many
vices, and for his having stolen away and married a noble lady
while his own wife was living) that never slept again through
his whole reign. In Brittany, the indignation was intense.
Arthur's own sister ELEANOR was in the power of John, and
shut up in a convent at Bristol, but his half sister ALICE
was in Brittany. The people chose her, and the murdered
prince's father-in-law, the last husband of Constance, to represent
them ; and carried their fiery complaints to King Philip. King
Philip summoned King John (as the holder of territory in France)
to come before him and defend himself. King John refusing to
appear. King Philip declared him false, perjured, and guilty;
and again made war. In a little time, by conquering the greater
part of his French territory, King Philip deprived him of one-
third of his dominions. And, through all the fighting that took
place. King John was always found, either to be eating and
drinking, like a gluttonous fool, when the danger was at a
distance, or to be running away, like a beaten cur, when it
was near.
You might suppose that when he was losing his dominions
at this rate, and when his own nobles cared so little for him or
his cause that they plainly refused to follow his banner out of
England, he had enemies enough. But he made another enemy
of the Pope, which he did in this way.
The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior monks
of that place wishing to get the start of the senior monks in the
appointment of his successor, met together at midnight, secretly
elected a certain REGINALD, and sent him off to Rome to get
the Pope's approval. The senior monks and the King soon
finding this out, and being very angry about it, the junior monks
gave way, and all the monks together elected the Bishop of
Norwich, who was the King's favourite. The Pope, hearing the
whole story, declared that neither election would do for him,
and that he elected STEPHEN Langton. The monks sub-
mitting to the Pope, the King turned them all out bodily, and
banished them as traitors. The Pope sent three bishops to the
JOHN 127
King, to threaten him with an Interdict. The King told the
bishops that if any Interdict were laid upon his kingdom, he
would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of all the monks
he could lay hold of, and send them over to Rome in that
undecorated state as a present for their master. The bishops,
nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled.
After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next
step ; which was Excommunication. King John was declared
excommunicated, with all the usual ceremonies. The King was
so incensed at this, and was made so desperate by the disaffec-
tion of his Barons and the hatred of his people, that it is said he
even privately sent ambassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering
to renounce his religion and hold his kingdom of them if they
would help him. It is related that the ambassadors were
admitted to the presence of the Turkish Emir, through long
lines of Moorish guards, and that they found the Emir with his
eyes seriously fixed on the pages of a large book, from which he
never once looked up. That they gave him a letter from the
King containing his proposals, and were gravely dismissed.
That presently the Emir sent for one of them, and conjured
him, by his faith in his religion, to say what kind of man the
King of England truly was ? That the ambassador, thus
pressed, replied that the King of England was a false tyrant,
against whom his own subjects would soon rise. And that this
was quite enough for the Emir.
Money being, in his position, the next best thing to men,
King John spared no means of getting it. He set on foot
another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy Jews (which
was quite in his way), and invented a new punishment for one
wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such time as that Jew should
produce a certain large sum of money, the King sentenced him
to be imprisoned, and, every day, to have one tooth violently
wrenched out of his head — beginning with the double teeth.
For seven days, the oppressed man bore the daily pain and
lost the daily tooth; but, on the eighth, he paid the money.
With the treasure raised in such ways, the King made an
expedition into Ireland, where some English nobles had
revolted. It was one of the very few places from which he
did not run away ; because no resistance was shown. He
128 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
made another expedition into Wales — whence he did run away
in the end : but not before he had got from the Welsh people,
as hostages, twenty-seven young men of the best families ; every
one of whom he caused to be slain in the following year.
To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now added his
last sentence ; Deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King,
absolved all his subjects from their allegiance, and sent Stephen
Langton and others to the King of France to tell him that, if
he would invade England, he should be forgiven all his sins — at
least, should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do.
As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to
invade England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and a fleet
of seventeen hundred ships to bring them over. But the English
people, however bitterly they hated the King, were not a people
to suffer invasion quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the
English standard was, in such great numbers to enrol themselves
as defenders of their native land, that there were not provisions
for them, and the King could only select and retain sixty thou-
sand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his own reasons for
objecting to either King John or King Philip being too powerful,
interfered. He entrusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf,
with the easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to
the English Camp, from France, to terrify him with exaggera-
tions of King Philip's power, and his own weakness in the
discontent of the English Barons and people. Pandolf dis-
charged his commission so well, that King John, in a wretched
panic, consented to acknowledge Stephen Langton; to resign
his kingdom " to God, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul " — which
meant the Pope ; and to hold it, ever afterwards, by the Pope's
leave, on payment of an annual sum of money. To this shame-
ful contract he publicly bound himself in the Church of the
Knights Templars at Dover : where he laid at the legate's feet
a part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled upon.
But they do say, that this was merely a genteel flourish, and that
he was afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket it.
There was an unfortunate prophet, of the name of Peter, who
had greatly increased King John's terrors by predicting that he
would be unknighted (which the King supposed to signify that
he would die) before the Feast of the Ascension should be past.
JOHN 129
That was the day after this humiliation. When the next morn-
ing came, and the King, who had been trembling all night, found
himself alive and safe, he ordered the prophet — and his son too
— to be dragged through the streets at the tails of horses, and
then hanged, for having frightened him.
As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King Philip's
great astonishment, took him under his protection, and informed
King Philip that he found he could not give him leave to invade
England. The angry Philip resolved to do it without his leave ;
but he gained nothing and lost much ; for the English, com-
manded by the Earl of Salisbury, went over, in five hundred
ships, to the French coast, before the French fleet had sailed
away from it, and utterly defeated the whole.
The Pope then took ofif his three sentences, one after another,
and empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John
into the favour of the Church again, and to ask him to dinner.
The King, who hated Langton with all his might and main —
and with reason too, for he was a great and a good man, with
whom such a King could have no sympathy — pretended to cry
and to be very grateful. There was a little difficulty about
settling how much the King should pay as a recompense to the
clergy for the losses he had caused them ; but, the end of it was,
that the superior clergy got a good deal, and the inferior clergy
got little or nothing — which has also happened since King John's
time, I believe.
When all these matters were arranged, the King in his
triumph became more fierce, and false, and insolent to all
around him than he had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns
against King Philip, gave him an opportunity of landing an
army in France ; with which he even took a town ! But, on
the French King's gaining a great victory, he ran away, of
course, and made a truce for five years.
And now the time approached when he was to be still further
humbled, and made to feel, if he could feel anything, what a
wretched creature he was. Of all men in the world, Stephen
Langton seemed raised up by Heaven to oppose and subdue
him. When he ruthlessly burnt and destroyed the property of
his own subjects, because their Lords, the Barons, would not
serve him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and
I
I30 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
threatened him. When he swore to restore the laws of King
Edward, or the laws of King Henry the First, Stephen Langton
knew his falsehood, and pursued him through all his evasions.
When the Barons met at the abbey of Saint Edmund's-Bury,
to consider their wrongs and the King's oppressions, Stephen
Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn
charter of rights and liberties from their perjured master, and
to swear, one by one, on the High Altar, that they would have
it, or would wage war against him to the death. When the
King hid himself in London from the Barons, and was at last
obliged to receive them, they told him roundly they would
not believe him unless Stephen Langton became a surety that
he would keep his word. When he took the Cross, to invest
himself with some interest, and belong to something that was
received withfavour, Stephen Langton was still immovable. When
he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton
in behalf of his new favourite, Stephen Langton was deaf, even
to the Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but the welfare
of England and the crimes of the English King.
At Easter-time, the Barons assembled at Stamford, in
Lincolnshire, in proud array, and, marching near to Oxford
where the King was, delivered into the hands of Stephen
Langton and two others, a list of grievances. "And these,"
they said, " he must redress, or we will do it for ourselves ! "
When Stephen Langton told the King as much, and read the
list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did him no
more good than his afterwards trying to pacify the Barons
with lies. They called themselves and their followers, " The
army of God and the Holy Church." Marching through the
country, with the people thronging to them everywhere (except
at Northampton, where they failed in an attack upon the
castle), they at last triumphantly set up their banner in
London itself, whither the whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed
to flock to join them. Seven knights alone, of all the knights in
England, remained with the King ; who, reduced to this strait,
at last sent the Earl of Pembroke to the Barons to say that he
approved of everything, and would meet them to sign their
charter when they would. " Then," said the Barons, " let the
day be the fifteenth of June, and the place, Runny-Mead."
THE DEATH OF KING JOHN
JOHN 133
On Monday, the fifteenth^jf June, one thousand two hundred
and fourteen, the King came from Windsor Castle, and the
Barons came from the town of Staines, and they met on Runny-
Mead, which is still a pleasant meadow by the Thames, where
rushes grow in the clear water of the winding river, and its
banks are green with grass and trees. On the side of the
Barons, came the General of their army, ROBERT FiTZ- WALTER,
and a great concourse of the nobility of England. With the
King, came, in all, some four-and-twenty persons of any note,
most of whom despised him, and were merely his advisers in
form. On that great day, and in that great company, the
King signed MAGNA Charta — the great charter of England
— by which he pledged himself to maintain the Church in its
rights ; to relieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals
of the Crown — of which the Barons, in their turn, pledged
themselves to relieve their vassals, the people; to respect the
liberties of London and of all other cities and boroughs; to
protect foreign merchants who came to England ; to imprison
no man without a fair trial ; and to sell, delay, or deny justice
to none. As the Barons knew his falsehood well, they further
required, as their securities, that he should send out of his
kingdom all his foreign troops ; that for two months they
should hold possession of the city of London, and Stephen
Langton of the Tower ; and that five-and-twenty of their body,
chosen by themselves, should be a lawful committee to watch
the keeping of the charter, and to make war upon him if he
broke it.
All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the charter
with a smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, would
have done so, as he departed from the splendid assembly.
When he got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a madman
in his helpless fury. And 'he broke the charter immediately
afterwards.
He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to the Pope
for help, and plotted to take London by surprise, while the
Barons should be holding a great tournament at Stamford,
which they had agreed to hold there as a celebration of the
charter. The Barons, however, found him out and put it off.
Then, when the Barons desired to see him and tax him with his
C34 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
treachery, he made numbers of appointments with them, and
kept none, and shifted from place to place, and was constantly
sneaking and skulking about. At last he appeared at Dover,
to join his foreign soldiers, of whom numbers came into his pay;
and with them he besieged and took Rochester Castle, which
was occupied by knights and soldiers of the Barons. He
would have hanged them every one ; but the leader of the
foreign soldiers, fearful of what the English people might after-
wards do to him, interfered to save the. knights ; therefore the
King was fain to satisfy his vengeance with the death of all
the common men. Then, he sent the Earl of Salisbury, with
one portion of his army, to ravage the eastern part of his own
dominions, while he carried fire and slaughter into the northern
part ; torturing, plundering, killing, and inflicting every possible
cruelty upon the people ; and, every morning, setting a worthy
example to his men by setting fire, with his own monster-hands,
to the house where he had slept last night. Nor was this all ; for
the Pope, coming to the aid of his precious friend, laid thekingdom
under an Interdict again, because the people took part with
the Barons. It did not much matter, for the people had grown
so used to it now, that they had begun to think nothing about
it. It occurred to them — perhaps to Stephen Langton too —
that they could keep their churches open, and ring their bells,
without the Pope's permission as well as with it. So, they tried
the experiment — and found that it succeeded perfectly.
It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wilderness
of cruelty, or longer to hold any terms with such a forsworn
outlaw of a King, the Barons sent to LOUIS, son of the French
monarch, to offer him the English crown. Caring as little for
the Pope's excommunication of him if he accepted the offer, as
it is possible his father may have cared for the Pope's forgive-
ness of his sins, he landed at Sandwich (King John immediately
running away from Dover, where he happened to be), and went
on to London. The Scottish King, with whom many of the
Northern English Lords had taken refuge, numbers of the
foreign soldiers, numbers of the Barons, and numbers of the
people, went over to him every day ; — King John, the while,
continually running away in all directions. The career of Louis
was checked, however, by the suspicions of the Barons, founded
HENRY THE THIRD 135
on the dying declaration of a French Lord, that when the
kingdom was conquered he was sworn to banish them as traitors,
and to give their estates to some of his own Nobles. Rather
than suffer this, some of the Barons hesitated : others even
went over to King John.
It seemed to be the turning-point of King John's fortunes,
for, in his savage and murderous course, he had now taken
some towns and met with some successes. But, happily for
England and humanity, his death was near. Crossing a
dangerous quicksand, called the Wash, not very far from
Wisbeach, the tide came up and nearly drowned his army.
He and his soldiers escaped ; but, looking back from the shore
when he was safe, he saw the roaring water sweep down in a
torrent, overturn the waggons, horses, and men, that carried
his treasure, and engulf them in a raging whirlpool from which
nothing could be delivered.
Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fingers, he went
on to Swinestead Abbey, where the monks set before him
quantities of pears, and peaches, and new cider — some say
poison too, but there is very little reason to suppose sO: — of
which he ate and drank in an immoderate and beastly way.
All night, he lay ill of a burning fever, and haunted with
horrible fears. Next day, they put him in a horse-litter, and
carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed another night
of pain and horror. Next day, they carried him, with greater
difiSculty than on the day before, to the castle of Newark upon
Trent ; and there, on the eighteenth of October, in the forty-
ninth year of his age, and the seventeenth of his vile reign, was
an end of this miserable brute.
CHAPTER XV
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED, OF
WINCHESTER
If any of the English Barons remembered the murdered
Arthur's sister, Eleanor the fair maid of Brittany, shut up in
her convent at Bristol, none among them spoke of her now.
136 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
HEAD-DRESSES OF THE TIME OF HENRY HI
or maintained her right to the Crown. The dead Usurper's
eldest boy, HENRY by name, was taken by the Earl of
Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the city of Gloucester,
and there crowned in great haste when he was only ten
years old. As the Crown itself had been lost with the King's
treasure, in the raging water, and, as there was no time to
make another, they put a circle of plain gold upon his head
instead. " We have been the enemies of this child's father,"
said Lord Pembroke, a good and true gentleman, to the few
Lords who were present, " and he merited our ill-will ; but
the child himself is innocent, and his youth demands our
friendship and protection." Those Lords felt tenderly towards
the little boy, remembering their own young children ; and
they bowed their heads, and said, " Long live King Henry
the Third!"
Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna Charta,
and made Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector of England,
as the King was too young to reign alone. The next thing
HENRY THE THIRD 137
to be done, was to get rid of Prince Louis of France, and to
win over those English Barons who were still ranged under
his banner. He was strong in many parts of England, and in
London itself; and he held, among other places, a certain
Castle calkd the Castle of Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To
this fortress, after some skirmishing and truce-making, Lord
Pembroke laid siege. Louis despatched an army of six hundred
knights and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve it. Lord
Pembroke, who was not strong enough for such a force, retired
with all his men. The army of the French Prince, which had
marched there with fire and plunder, marched away with fire
and plunder, and came, in a boastful swaggering manner, to
Lincoln. The town submitted j but the Castle in the town,
held by a brave widow lady, named NiCHOLA DE Camville
(whose property it was), made such a sturdy resistance, that
the French Count in command of the army of the French
Prince, found it necessary to besiege this Castle. While he
was thus engaged, word was brought to him that Lord
Pembroke, with four hundred knights, two hundred and fifty
men with cross-bows, and a stout force both of horse and foot,
was marching towards him. " What care I ? " said the French
Count. " The Englishman is not so mad as to attack me and
my great army in a walled town I " But the Englishman did
it for all that, and did it — not so madly but so wisely, that he
decoyed the great army into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and
byways of Lincoln, where its horse-soldiers could not ride in
any strong body ; and there he made such havoc with them,
that the whole force surrendered themselves prisoners, except
the Count ; who said that he would never yield to any English
traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this
victory, which the English called, for a joke, the Fair of
Lincoln, was the usual one in those times — the common men
were slain without any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen
paid ransom and went home.
The wife of Louis, the fair BLANCHE OF CASTILE, dutifully
equipped a fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it over from
France to her husband's aid. An English fleet of forty ships,
some good and some bad, under Hubert de Burgh (who had
before then been very brave against the French at Dover
138 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Castle), gallantly met them near the mouth of the Thames,
and took or sunk sixty-five in one fight This great loss
put an end to the French Prince's hopes. A treaty was
made at Lambeth, in virtue of which the English Barons
who had remained attached to his cause returned to their
allegiance, and it was engaged on both sides that the Prince
and all his troops should retire peacefully to France. It was
time to go ; for war had made him so poor that he was obliged
to borrow money from the citizens of London to pay his
expenses home.
Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to governing the
country justly, and to healing the quarrels and disturbances that
had arisen among men in the days of the bad King John.
He caused Magna Charta to be still more improved, and so
amended the Forest Laws, that a Peasant was no longer put
to death for killing a stag in a Royal Forest, but was only
imprisoned. It would have been well for England if it could
have had so good a Protector many years longer, but that
was not to be. Within three years after the young King's
Coronation, Lord Pembroke died ; and you may see his tomb,
at this day, in the old Temple Church in London.
The Protectorship was now divided. PETER DE RoCHES,
whom King John had made Bishop of Winchester, was entrusted
with the care of the person of the young sovereign ; and the
exercise of the Royal authority was confided to EARL Hubert
DE Burgh. These two personages had from the first no liking
for each other, and soon became enemies. When the young
King was declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that Hubert
increased in power and favour, retired discontentedly, and went
abroad. For nearly ten years afterwards Hubert had full sway
alone.
But ten years is a long time to hold the favour of a King.
This King, too, as he grew up, showed a strong resemblance
to his father, in feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution.
The best that can be said of him is that he was not cruel.
De Roches coming home again, after ten years, and being a
novelty, the King began to favour him and to look coldly
on Hubert. Wanting money besides, and having made Hubert
rich, he began to dislike Hubert. At last he was made to
HENRY THE THIRD 139
believe, or pretended to believe, that Hubert had misappro-
priated some of the Royal treasure ; and ordered him to
furnish an account of all he had done in his administration.
Besides which, the foolish charge was brought against Hubert
that he had made himself the King's favourite by magic.
Hubert very well knowing that he could never defend himself
against such nonsense, and that his old enemy must be deter-
mined on his ruin, instead of answering the charges fled to
Merton Abbey. Then the King, in a violent passion, sent
for the Mayor of London, and said to the Mayor, " Take twenty
thousand citizens, and drag me Hubert de Burgh out of that
abbey, and bring him here." The Mayor posted off to do it,
but the Archbishop of Dublin (who was a friend of Hubert's)
warning the King that an abbey was a sacred place, and that
if he committed any violence there, he must answer for it to
the Church, the King changed his mind and called the Mayor
back, and declared that Hubert should have four months to
prep£u-e his defence, and should be safe and free during that
time.
Hubert, who relied upon the King's word, though I think he
was old enough to have known better, came out of Merton
Abbey upon these conditions, and journeyed away to see his
wife : a Scottish Princess who was then at St Edmund's-Bury.
Almost as soon as he had departed from the Sanctuary,
his enemies persuaded the weak King to send out one Sir
Godfrey de Crancumb, who commanded three hundred
vagabonds called the Black Band, with orders to seize him.
They came up with him at a little town in Essex, called
Brentwood, when he was in bed. He leaped out of bed, got
out of the house, fled to the church, ran up to the altar, and
laid his hand upon the cross. Sir Godfrey and the Black Band,
caring neither for church, altar, nor cross, dragged him forth
to the church door, with their drawn swords flashing round
his head, and sent for a Smith to rivet a set of chains upon
him. When the Smith (I wish I knew his name !) was brought,
all dark and swarthy with the smoke of his forge, and panting
with the speed he had made ; and the Black Band, falling aside
to show him the Prisoner, cried with a loud uproar, " Make
the fettters heavy! make them strong!" the Smith dropped
140 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
upon his knee — but not to the Black Band — and said, " This
is the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh, who fought at Dover
Castle, and destroyed the French fleet, and has done his country-
much good service. You may kill me, if you like, but I will
never make a chain for Earl Hubert de Burgh ! "
The Black Band never blushed, or they might have blushed
at this. They knocked the Smith about from one to another,
and swore at him, and tied the Earl on horseback, undressed
as he was, and carried him off to the Tower of London. The
Bishops, however, were so indignant at the violation of the
Sanctuary of the Church, that the frightened King soon ordered
the Black Band to take him back again ; at the same time
commanding the Sheriff of Essex to prevent his escaping out
of Brentwood Church. Well I the Sheriff dug a deep trench
all round the church, and erected a high fence, and watched
the church night and day ; the Black Band and their Captain
watched it too, like three hundred and one black wolves. For
thirty-nine days, Hubert de Burgh remained within. At length,
upon the fortieth day, cold and hunger were too much for him,
and he gave himself up to the Black Band, who carried him
off, for the second time, to the Tower. When his trial came
on, he refused to plead ; but at last it was arranged that he
should give up all the royal lands which had been bestowed
upon him, and should be kept at the Castle of Devizes, in
what was called " free prison," in charge of four knights ap-
pointed by four lords. There, he remained almost a year,
until, learning that a follower of his old enemy the Bishop
was made Keeper of the Castle, and fearing that he might be
killed by treachery, he climbed the ramparts one dark night,
dropped from the top of the high Castle wall, into the moat,
and coming safely to the ground, took refuge in another church.
From this place he was delivered by a party of horse despatched
to his help by some nobles, who were by this time in revolt
against the King, and assembled in Wales. He was finally
pardoned and restored to his estates, but he lived privately,
and never more aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a
high place in the King's favour. And thus end — more happily
than the stories of many favourites of Kings — the adventures
of Earl Hubert de Burgh.
HENRY THE THIRD 141
The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up to
rebellion by the overbearing conduct of the Bishop of Winchester,
who, finding that the King secretly hated the Great Charter
which had been forced from his father, did his utmost to confirm
him in that dislike, and in the preference he showed to foreigners
over the English. Of this, and of his even publicly declaring
that the Barons of England were inferior to those of France, the
English Lords complained with such bitterness, that the King,
finding them well supported by the clergy, became frightened
for his throne, and sent away the Bishop and all his foreign
associates. On his marriage, however, with ELEANOR, a French
lady, the daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly favoured
the foreigners again ; and so many of his wife's relations came
over, and made such an immense family-party at court, and got
so many good things, and pocketed so much money, and were
so high with the English whose money they pocketed, that the
bolder English Barons murmured openly about a clause there
was in the Great Charter, which provided for the banishment of
unreasonable favourites. But, the foreigners only laughed dis-
dainfully, and said, " What are your English laws to us ? "
King Philip of France had died, and had been succeeded by
Prince Louis, who had also died after a short reign of three
years, and had been succeeded by his son of the same name-
so moderate and just a man, that he was not the least in the
world like a King, as Kings went. ISABELLA, King Henry's
mother, wished very much (for a certain spite she had) that
England should make war against this King; and, as King
Henry was a mere puppet in anybody's hands who knew how
to manage his feebleness, she easily carried her point with him.
But, the Parliament were determined to give him no money for
such a war. So, to defy the Parliament, he packed up thirty
large casks of silver — I don't know how he got so much ; I
dare say he screwed it out of the miserable Jews — and put them
aboard ship, and went away himself to carry war into France :
accompanied by his mother and his brother Richard, Earl of
Cornwall, who was rich and clever. But he only got well
beaten, and came home.
The good-humour of the Parliament was not restored by
this. They reproached the King with wasting the public money
142 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to make greedy foreigners rich, and were so stern with him, and
so determined not to let him have more of it to waste if they
could help it, that he was at his wit's end for some, and tried so
shamelessly to get all he could from his subjects, by excuses or
by force, that the people used to say the King was the sturdiest
beggar in England. He took the Cross, thinking to get some
money by that means ; but, as it was very well known that he
never meant to go on a crusade, he got none. In all this
contention, the Londoners were particularly keen against the
King, and the King hated them warmly in return. Hating or
loving, however, made no difference; he continued in the same
condition for nine or ten years, when at last the Barons said that
if he would solemnly confirm their liberties afresh, the Parliament
would vote him a large sum.
As he readily consented, there was a great meeting held in
Westminster Hall, one pleasant day in May, when all the clergy,
dressed in their robes and holding every one of them a burning
candle in his hand, stood up (the Barons being also there) while
the Archbishop of Canterbury read the sentence of excommuni-
cation against any man, and all men, who should henceforth, in
any way, infringe the Great Charter of the Kingdom. When
he had done, they all put out their burning candles with a curse
upon the soul of any one, and every one, who should merit that
sentence. The King concluded with an oath to keep the
Charter, "As I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a
Knight, as I am a King ! "
It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them ; and the
King did both, as his father had done before him. He took
to his old courses again when he was supplied with money, and
soon cured of their weakness the few who had ever really trusted
him. When his money was gone, and he was once more
borrowing and begging everywhere with a meanness worthy of
his nature, he got into a difficulty with the Pope respecting the
Crown of Sicily, which the Pope said he had a right to give
away, and which he offered to King Henry for his second son,
Prince Edmund. But, if you or I give away what we have
not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it is likely^that the
person to whom we give it, will have some trouble in taking' it.
It was exactly so in this case. It was necessary to conquer the
HENRY THE THIRD 143
Sicilian Crown before it could be put upon young Edmund's
head. It could not be conquered without money. The Pope
ordered the clergy to raise money. The clergy, however, were
not so obedient to him as usual ; they had been disputing with
him for some time about his unjust preference of Italian Priests
in England ; and they had begun to doubt whether the King's
chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for preaching in seven
hundred churches, could possibly be, even by the Pope's favour,
in seven hundred places at once. "The Pope and the King
together," said the Bishop of London, " may take the mitre off
my head ; but, if they do, they will find that I shall put on a
soldier's helmet. I pay nothing." The Bishop of Worcester
was as bold as the Bishop of London, and would pay nothing
either. Such sums as the more timid or more helpless of the
clergy did raise were squandered away, without doing any good
to the King, or bringing the Sicilian Crown an inch nearer to
Prince Edmund's head. The end of the business was, that the
Pope gave the Crown to the brother of the King of France (who
conquered it for himself), and sent the King of England in, a
bill of one hundred thousand pounds for the expenses of not
having won it.
The King was now so much distressed that we might almost
pity him, if it were possible to pity a King so shabby and
ridiculous. His clever brother, Richard, had bought the title
of King of the Romans from the German people, and was no
longer near him, to help him with advice. The clergy, resisting
the very Pope, were in alliance with the Barons. The Barons
were headed by SiMON DE MONTFORT, Earl of Leicester,
married to King Henry's sister, and, though a foreigner him-
self, the most popular man in England against the foreign
favourites. When the King next met his Parliament, the
Barons, led by this Earl, came before him, armed from head to
foot, and cased in armour. When the Parliament again assembled,
in a month's time, at Oxford, this Earl was at their head, and
the King was obliged to consent, on oath, to what was called a
Committee of Government : consisting of twenty-four members :
twelve chosen by the Barons, and twelve chosen by himself.
But, at a good time for him, his brother Richard came back.
Richard's first act (the Barons would not admit him into
144 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
England on other terms) was to swear to be faithful to the
Committee of Government — which he immediately began to
oppose with all his might. Then, the Barons began to quarrel
among themselves ; especially the proud Earl of Gloucester with
the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in disgust. Then, the
people began to be dissatisfied with the Barons, because they
did not do enough for them. The King's chances seemed so
good again at length, that he took heart enough — or caught it
from his brother — to tell the Committee of Government that he
abolished them — as to his oath, never mind that, the Pope said I
— and to seize all the money in the Mint, and to shut himself
up in the Tower of London. Here he was joined by his eldest
son, Prince Edward ; and, from the Tower, he made public a letter
of the Pope's to the world in general, informing all men that he
had been an excellent and just King for five-and-forty years.
As everybody knew he had been nothing of the sort, nobody
cared much for this document. It so chanced that the proud
Earl of Gloucester dying, was succeeded by his son ; and that
his son, instead of being the enemy of the Earl of Leicester,
was (for the time) his friend. It fell out, therefore, that these
two Earls joined their forces, took several of the Royal Castles
in the country, and advanced as hard as they could on London.
The London people, always opposed to the King, declared for
them with great joy. The King himself remained shut up, not
at all gloriously, in the Tower. Prince Edward made the best
of his way to Windsor Castle. His mother, the Queen,
attempted to follow him by water ; but, the people seeing her
barge rowing up the river, and hating her with all their hearts,
ran to London Bridge, got together a quantity of stones and
mud, and pelted the barge as it came through, crying furiously,
" Drown the Witch ! Drown her I " They were so near doing
it, that the Mayor took the old lady under his protection, and
shut her up in St Paul's until the danger was past.
It would require a great deal of writing on my part, and a
great deal of reading on yours, to follow the King through his
disputes with the Barons, and to follow the Barons through
their disputes with one another — so I will make short work of
it for both of us, and only relate the chief events that arose out
of these quarrels. The good King of France was asked to
HENRY THE THIRD
H5
decide between them. He gave it as his opinion that the King
must maintain the Great Charter, and that the Barons must
give up the Committee of Government, and all the rest that
had been done by the Parliament at Oxford : which the
Royalists, or King's party, scornfully called the Mad Parlia-
ment. The Barons declared that these were not fair terms, and
they would not accept them. Then they caused the great bell
of St Paul's to be tolled, for the purpose of rousing up the
London people, who armed themselves at the dismal sound and
formed quite an army in the streets. I am sorry to say, how-
ever, that instead of falling upon the King's party with whom
their quarrel was, they fell upon the miserable Jews, and killed
at least five hundred of them. They pretended that some of
these Jews were on the King's side, and that they kept hidden in
their houses, for the destruction of the people, a certain terrible
composition called Greek Fire, which could not be put out with
water, but only burnt the fiercer for it. What they really did
keep in their houses was money ; and this their cruel enemies
wanted, and this their cruel enemies took, like robbers and
murderers.
The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head of these
Londoners and other forces, and followed the King to Lewes
in Sussex, where he lay encamped with his army. Before
giving the King's forces battle here, the Earl addressed his
soldiers, and said that King Henry the Third had broken so
many oaths, that he had become the enemy of God, and there-
fore they would wear white crosses on their breasts, as if they
were arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian, but against a Turk.
White-crossed accordingly, they rushed into the fig:ht. They
would have lost the day — the King having on his side all the
foreigners in England : and, from Scotland, John Comyn,
John Baliol, and Robert Bruce, with all their men — but
for the impatience of Prince Edward, who, in his hot desire
to have vengeance on the people of London, threw the whole
of his father's army into confusion. He was taken Prisoner ;
so was the King ; so was the King's brother, the King of the
Romans; and five thousand Englishmen were left dead upon
the bloody grass.
For this success, the Pope excommunicated the Earl of
K
i4^ A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Leicester : which neither the Earl nor the people cared at all
about. The people loved him and supported him, and he be-
came the real King ; having all the power of the government in
his own hand, though he was outwardly respectful to King
Henry the Third, whom he took with him wherever he went,
like a poor old limp court-card. He summoned a Parliament
(in the year one thousand two hundred and sixty-five) which
was the first Parliament in England that the people had any
real share in electing ; and he grew more and more in favour
with the people every day, and they stood by him in whatever
he did.
Many of the other Barons, and particularly the Earl of
Gloucester, who had become by this time as proud as his father,
grew jealous of this powerful and popular Earl, who was proud
too, and began to conspire against him. Since the battle
of Lewes, Prince Edward had been kept as a hostage, and,
though he was otherwise treated like a Prince, had never been
allowed to go out without attendants appointed by the Earl of
Leicester, who watched him. The conspiring Lords found
means to propose to him, in secret, that they should assist him
to escape, and should make him their leader ; to which he very
heartily consented.
So, on a day that was agreed upon, he said to his attendants
after dinner (being then at Hereford), " I should like to ride on
horseback, this fine afternoon, a little way into the country."
As they, too, thought it would be very pleasant to have a canter
in the sunshine, they all rode out of the town together in a gay
little troop. When they came to a fine level piece of turf, the
Prince fell to comparing their horses one with another, and
offering bets that one was faster than another ; and the atten-
dants, suspecting no harm, rode galloping matches until their
horses were quite tired. The Prince rode no matches himself, but
looked on from his saddle, and staked his money. Thus they
passed the whole merry afternoon. Now, the sun was setting,
and they were all going slowly up a hill, the Prince's horse very
fresh and all the other horses very weary, when a strange rider
mounted on a grey steed appeared at the top of the hill, and
waved his hat. "What does the fellow mean?" said the
attendants one to another. The Prince answered on the instant
HENRY THE THIRD 147
by setting spurs to his horse, dashing away at his utmost speed,
joining the man, riding into the midst of a little crowd of
horsemen who were then seen waiting under some trees, and
who closed around him ; and so he departed in a cloud of dust,
leaving the road empty of all but the baffled attendants, who
sat looking at one another, while their horses drooped their ears
and panted.
The Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. The
Earl of Leicester, with a part of the army and the stupid old
King, was at Hereford. One of the Earl of Leicester's sons,
Simon de Montfort, with another part of the army, was in
Sussex. To prevent these two parts from uniting was the
Prince's first object. He attacked Simon de Montfort, by night,
defeated him, seized his banners and treasure, and forced him into
Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, which belonged to his family.
His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the meanwhile, not
knowing what had happened, marched out of Hereford, with
his part of the army and the King, to meet him. He came on
a bright morning in August, to Evesham, which is watered
by the pleasant river Avon. Looking rather anxiously across
the prospect towards Kenilworth, he saw his own banners
advancing; and his face brightened with joy. But it clouded
darkly when he presently perceived that the banners were
captured, and in the enemy's hands ; and he said, " It is over.
The Lord have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Prince
Edward's ! "
He fought like a true Knight, nevertheless. When his horse
was killed under him, he fought on foot. It was a fierce battle,
and the dead lay in heaps everywhere. The old King, stuck up
in a suit of armour on a big war-horse, which didn't mind him at
all, and which carried him into all sorts of places where he
didn't want to go, got into everybody's way, and very nearly
got knocked on the head by one of his son's men. But he
managed to pipe out, " I am Harry of Winchester 1 " and the
Prince, who heard him, seized his bridle, and took him out of
peril. The Earl of Leicester still fought bravely, until his best
son Henry was killed, and the bodies of his best friends choked
his path ; and then he fell, still fighting, sword in hand. They
mangled his body, and sent it as a present to a noble lady — but
148 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
a very unpleasant lady, I should think — who was the wife of his
worst enemy. They could not mangle his memory in the
minds of the faithful people, though. Many years afterwards,
they loved him more than ever, and regarded him as a Saint,
and always spoke of him as " Sir Simon the Righteous."
And even though he was dead, the cause for which he had
fought still lived, and was strong, and forced itself upon the
King in the very hour of victory. Henry found himself obliged
to respect the Great Charter, however much he hated it, and to
make laws similar to the laws of the Great Earl of Leicester, and
to be moderate and forgiving towards the people at last — even
towards the people of London, who had so long opposed him.
There were more risings before all this was done, but they were
set at rest by these means, and Prince Edward did his best in
all things to restore peace. One Sir Adam de Gourdon was
the last dissatisfied knight in arms ; but the Prince vanquished
him in single combat, in a wood, and nobly gave him his life,
and became his friend, instead of slaying him. Sir Adam was
not ungrateful. He ever afterwards remained devoted to his
generous conqueror.
When the troubles of the Kingdom were thus calmed, Prince
Edward and his cousin Henry took the Cross, and went away
to the Holy Land, with many English Lords and Knights.
Four years afterwards the King of the Romans died, and, next
year (one thousand two hundred and seventy-two), his brother
the weak King of England died. He was sixty-eight years old
then, and had reigned fifty-six years. He was as much of a
King in death, as he had ever been in life. He was the mere
pale shadow of a King at all times.
CHAPTER XVI
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS
It was now the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and
seventy-two ; and Prince Edward, the heir to the throne, being
away in the Holy Land, knew nothing of his father's death.
The Barons, however, proclaimed him King, immediately after
EDWARD THE FIRST
149
the Royal funeral ; and the people very willingly consented,
since most men knew too well by this time what the horrors
of a contest for the crown were. So King Edward the First,
called, in a not very complimentary manner, LONGSHANKS,
because of the slenderness of his legs, was peacefully accepted
by the English Nation.
His legs had need to be strong, however long and thin they
were ; for they had to support him through many difficulties on
the fiery sands of Asia, where his small force of soldiers fainted,
died, deserted, and seemed to melt away. But his prowess made
light of it, and he said, " I will go on, if I go on with no other
follower than my groom ! "
A Prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of trouble. He
stormed Nazareth, at which place, of all places on earth, I am
sorry to relate, he made a frightful slaughter of innocent people ;
and then he went to Acre, where he got a truce of ten years from
the Sultan. He had very nearly lost his life in Acre, through
the treachery of a Saracen Noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who,
making the pretence that he had some idea of turning Christian
and wanted to know all about that religion, sent a trusty
messenger to Edward very often — with a dagger in his sleeve.
At last, one Friday in Whitsun week, when it was very hot, and
all the sandy prospect lay beneath the blazing sun, burnt up like
a great overdone biscuit, and Edward was lying on a couch,
ISO A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
dressed for coolness in only a loose robe, the messenger, with
his chocolate-coloured face and his bright dark eyes and white
teeth, came creeping in with a letter, and kneeled down like a
tame tiger. But, the moment Edward stretched out his hand
to take the letter, the tiger made a spring at his heart. He was
quick, but Edward was quick too. He seized the traitor by his
chocolate throat, threw him to the ground, and slew him with
the very dagger he had drawn. The weapon had struck Edward
in the arm, and although the wound itself was slight, it threatened
to be mortal, for the blade of the dagger had been smeared with
poison. Thanks, however, to a better surgeon than was often
to be found in those times, and to some wholesome herbs,
and above all, to his faithful wife, ELEANOR, who devotedly
nursed him, and is said by some to have sucked the poison
from the wound with her own red lips (which I am very
willing to believe), Edward soon recovered and was sound
again.
As the King his father had sent entreaties to him to return
home, he now began the journey. He had got as far as Italy,
when he met messengers who brought him intelligence of the
King's death. Hearing that all was quiet at home, he made no
haste to return to his own dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope,
and went in state through various Italian Towns, where he was
welcomed with acclamations as a mighty champion of the Cross
from the Holy Land, and where he received presents of purple
mantles and prancing horses, and went along in great triumph.
The shouting people little knew that he was the last English
monarch who would ever embark in a crusade, or that within
twenty years every conquest which the Christians had made in
the Holy Land at the cost of so much blood, would be won back
by the Turks. But all this came to pass.
There was, and there is, an old town standing in a plain in
France, called Chalons. When the king was coming towards
this place on his way to England, a wily French Lord, called
the Count of Chilons, sent him a polite challenge to come with
his knights and hold a fair tournament with the Count and Ms
knights, and make a day of it with sword and lance. It was
represented to the King that the Count of Chilons was not to
be trusted, and that, instead of a holiday fight for mere show
PRINCE EDWARD IN PALESTINE
EDWARD THE FIRST 153
and in good humour, he secretly meant a real battle, in which
the English should be defeated by superior force.
The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the appointed
place on the appointed day with a thousand followers. When
the Count came with two thousand and attacked the English in
earnest, the English rushed at them with such valour that the
Count's men and the Count's horses soon began to be tumbled
down all over the field. The Count himself seized the King
round the neck, but the King tumbled him out of his saddle in
return for the compliment, and, jumping from his own horse,
and standing over him, beat away at his iron armour like a
blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when the Count
owned himself defeated and offered his sword, the King would
not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to a
common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight,
that it was afterwards called the little Battle of Chilons.
The English were very well disposed to be proud of their King
after these adventures ; so, when he landed at Dover in the year
one thousand two hundred and seventy-four (being then thirty-
six years old), and went on to Westminster where he and his
good Queen were crowned with great magnificence, splendid
rejoicings took place. For the coronation-feast there were pro-
vided, among other eatables, four hundred oxen, four hundred
sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs, eighteen wild boars, three
hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty thousand fowls. The
fountains and conduits in the street flowed with red and white
wine instead of water ; the rich citizens hung silks and cloths
of the brightest colours out of their windows to increase the
beauty of the show, and threw out gold and silver by whole
handfuls to make scrambles for the crowd. In short, there was
such eating and drinking, such music and capering, such a
ringing of bells and tossing of caps, such a shouting, and
singing, and revelling, as the narrow overhanging streets of
old London City had not witnessed for many a long day. All
the people were merry — except the poor Jews, who, trembling
within their houses, and scarcely daring to peep out, began to
foresee that they would have to find the money for this joviality
sooner or later.
To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for the present, I am
154 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
sorry to add that in this reign they were most unmercifully
pillaged. They were hanged in great numbers, on accusations
of having clipped the King's coin — which all kinds of people
had done. They were heavily taxed ; they were disgracefully
badged ; they were, on one day, thirteen years after the corona-
tion, taken up with their wives and children and thrown into
beastly prisons, until they purchased their release by paying to
the King twelve thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of
property belonging to them was seized by the King, except so
little as would defray the charge of their taking themselves
away into foreign countries. Many years elapsed before the hope
of gain induced any of their race to return to England, where
they had been treated so heartlessly and had suffered so much.
If King Edward the First had been as bad a king to
Christians as he was to Jews, he would have been bad indeed.
But he was, in general, a wise and great monarch, under whom
the country much improved. He had no love for the Great
Charter — few Kings had, through many many years — but he
had high qualities. The first bold object which he conceived
when he came home, was, to unite under one Sovereign England,
Scotland, and Wales ; the two last of which countries had each
a little king of its own, about whom the people were always
quarrelling and fighting, and making a prodigious disturbance —
a great deal more than he was worth. In the course of King
Edward's reign he was engaged, besides, in a war with France.
To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate their histories
and take them thus. Wales, first. France, second. Scotland,
third.
Llewellyn was the Prince of Wales. He had been on
the side of the Barons in the reign of the stupid old King, but
had afterwards sworn allegiance to him. When King Edward
came to the throne, Llewellyn was required to swear allegiance
to him also ; which he refused to do. The King, being crowned
and in his own dominions, three times more required Llewellyn
to come and do homage ; and three times more Llewellyn said
he would rather not. He was going to be married to ELEANOR
DE MONTFORT, a young lady of the family mentioned in
the last reign; and it chanced that this young lady, coming
EDWARD THE FIRST 155
from France with her youngest brother, Emeric, was taken
by an English ship, and was ordered by the English King to
be detained. Upon this, the quarrel came to a head. The
King went with his fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so en-
compassing Llewellyn, that he could only take refuge in the
bleak mountain region of Snowdon in which no provisions could
reach him, he was soon starved into an apology, and into a
treaty of peace, and into paying the expenses of the war. The
King, however, forgave him some of the hardest conditions of
the treaty, and consented to his marriage. And he now thought
he had reduced WaleS to obedience.
But, the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, quiet,
pleasant people, who liked to receive strangers in their cottages
among the mountains, and to set before them with free hospi-
tality whatever they had to eat and drink, and to play to them
on their harps, and sing their native ballads to them, were a
people of great spirit when their blood was up. Englishmen,
after this affair, began to be insolent in Wales, and to assume
the air of masters ; and the Welsh pride could not bear it.
Moveover, they believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of
whose unlucky old prophecies somebody always seemed doomed
to remember when there was a chance of its doing harm ; and
just at this time some blind old gentleman with a harp and a
long white beard, who was an excellent person, but had become
of an unknown age and tedious, burst out with a declaration
that Merlin had predicted that when English money should
become round, a Prince of Wales would be crowned in London.
Now, King Edward had recently forbidden the English penny
to be cut into halves and quarters for halfpence and farthings,
and had actually introduced a round coin ; therefore, the Welsh
people said this was the time Merlin meant, and rose
accordingly.
King Edward had bought over PRINCE DAVID, Llewellyn's
brother, by heaping favours upon him ; but he was the first to
revolt, being perhaps troubled in his conscience. One stormy
night, he surprised the Castle of Hawarden, in possession of
which an English nobleman had been left; killed the whole
garrison, and carried off the nobleman a prisoner to Snowdon.
Upon, this, the Welsh people rose like one man. King Edward,
156 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
with his army, marching from Worcester to the Menai Strait,
crossed it — near to where the wonderful tubular iron bridge
now, in days so different, makes a passage for railway trains
— by a bridge of boats that enabled forty men to march abreast.
He subdued the Island of Anglesea, and sent his men forward
to observe the enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh
created a panic among them, and they fell back to the bridge.
The tide had in the meantime risen and separated the boats ;
the Welsh pursuing them, they were driven into the sea, and
there they sank, in their heavy iron armour, by thousands.
After this victory Llewellyn, helped by the severe winter-
weather of Wales, gained another battle ; but the King ordering
a portion of his English army to advance through South Wales,
and catch him between two foes, and Llewellyn bravely turning
to meet this new enemy, he was surprised and killed — very
meanly, for he was unarmed and defenceless. His head was
struck off and sent to London, where it was fixed upon the
Tower, encircled with a wreath, some say of ivy, some say of
willow, some say of silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin in
ridicule of the prediction.
David, however, still held out for six months, though eagerly
sought after by the King, and hunted by his own countrymen.
One of them finally betrayed him with his wife and children.
He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered ; and
from that time this became the established punishment of
Traitors in England — a punishment wholly without excuse, as
being revolting, vile, and cruel, after its object is dead ; and
which has no sense in it, as its only real degradation (and that
nothing can blot out) is to the country that permits on any con-
sideration such abominable barbarity.
Wales was now subdued. The Queen giving birth to a
young prince in the Castle of Carnarvon, the King showed him
to the Welsh people as their countryman, and called him
Prince of Wales ; a title that has ever since been borne by the
heir-apparent to the English Throne — which that little Prince
soon became, by the death of his elder brother. The King did
better things for the Welsh than that, by improving their laws
and encouragingtheir trade. Disturbances still took place.chiefly
occasioned by the avarice and pride of the English Lords, on whom
EDWARD THE FIRST 157
Welsh lands and castles had been bestowed ; but they were
subdued, and the country never rose again. There is a legend
that to prevent the people from being incited to rebellion by
the songs of their bards and harpers, Edward had them all put
to death. Some of them may have fallen among other men
who held out against the King; but this general slaughter
is, I think, a fancy of the harpers themselves, who, I dare say,
made a song about it many years afterwards, and sang it by
the Welsh firesides until it came to be believed.
The foreign war of the reign of Edward the First arose in this
way. The crews of two vessels, one a Norman ship, and the
other an English ship, happened to go to the same place in
their boats to fill their casks with fresh water. Being rough
angry fellows, they began to quarrel, and then to fight — the
English with their fists ; the Normans with their knives — and,
in the fight, a Norman was killed. The Norman crew, instead
of revenging themselves upon those English sailors with whom
they had quarrelled (who were too strong for them, I suspect),
took to their ship again in a great rage, attacked the first
English ship they met, laid hold of an unoffending merchant
who happened to be on board, and brutally hanged him in the
•■igging of their own vessel with a dog at his feet. This so
enraged the English sailors that there was no restraining them ;
and whenever, and wherever, English sailors met Norman
sailors, they fell upon each other tooth and nail. The Irish and
Dutch sailors took part with the English ; the French and
Genoese sailors helped the Normans ; and thus the greater
part of the mariners sailing over the sea became, in their
way, as violent and raging as the sea itself when it is disturbed.
King Edward's fame had been so high abroad that he had
been chosen to decide a difference between France and another
foreign power, and had lived upon the Continent three years.
At first, neither he nor the French King PHILIP (the good
Louis had been dead some time) interfered in these quarrels ;
but when a fleet of eighty English ships engaged and utterly
defeated a Norman fleet of two hundred, in a pitched battle
fought round a ship at anchor, in which no quarter was given,
the matter became too serious to be passed over. King Edward,
158 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
as Duke of Guienne, was summoned to present himself before
the King of France, at Paris, and answer for the damage done
by his sailor subjects. At first, he sent the Bishop of London
as his representative, and then his brother Edmund, who was
married to the French Queen's mother. I am afraid Edmund
was an easy man, and allowed himself to be talked over by his
charming relations, the French court ladies ; at all events, he
was induced to give up his brother's dukedom for forty days —
as a mere form, the French King said, to satisfy his honour —
and he was so very much astonished, when the time was out,
to find that the French King had no idea of giving it up again,
that I should not wonder if it hastened his death : which soon
took place.
King Edward was a King to win his foreign dukedom back
again, if it could be won by energy and valour. He raised a large
army, renounced his allegiance as Duke of Guienne, and crossed
the sea to carry war into France. Before any important battle
was fought, however, a truce was agreed upon for two years ;
and in the course of that time, the Pope effected a reconciliation.
King Edward, who was now a widower, having lost his affec-
tionate and good wife, Eleanor, married the French King's
sister, Margaret ; and the Prince of Wales was contracted to
the French King's daughter Isabella.
Out of bad things, good things sometimes arise. Out of
this hanging of the innocent merchant, and the bloodshed and
strife it caused, there came to be established one of the greatest
powers that the English people now possess. The preparations
for the war being very expensive, and King Edward greatly
wanting money, and being very arbitrary in his ways of raising
it, some of the Barons began firmly to oppose him. Two of
them, in particular, Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and
Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, were so stout against him, that
they maintained he had no right to command them to head
his forces in Guienne, and flatly refused to go there. "By
Heaven, Sir Earl," said the King to the Earl of Hereford, in a
great passion, " you shall either go or be hanged ! " " By
Heaven, Sir King," replied the Earl, " I will neither go nor yet
will I be hanged ! " and both he and the other Earl sturdily
left the court, attended by many Lords. The King tried every
EDWARD THE FIRST 159
means of raising money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of all
the Pope said to the contrary ; and when they refused to pay,
reduced them to submission, by saying. Very well, then they
had no claim upon the government for protection, and any
man might plunder them who would — which a good many men
were very ready to do, and very readily did, and which the clergy
found too losing a game to be played at long. He seized
all the wool and leather in the hands of the merchants,
promising to pay for it some fine day ; and he set a tax
upon the exportation of wool, which was so unpopular among
the traders that it was called, " The evil toll." But all would
not do. The Barons, led by those two great Earls, declared
any taxes imposed without the consent of Parliament, unlawful ;
and the Parliament refused to impose taxes, until the King
should confirm afresh the two Great Charters, and should
solemnly declare in writing, that there was no power in the
country to raise money from the people, evermore, but the
power of Parliament representing all ranks of the people. The
King was very unwilling to diminish his own power by allowing
this great privilege in the Parliament; but there was no help
for it, and he at last complied. We shall come to another King
by-and-by, who might have saved his head from rolling off, if
he had profited by this example.
The people gained other benefits in Parliament from the
good sense and wisdom of this King. Many of the laws were
much improved ; provision was made for the greater safety of
travellers, and the apprehension of thieves and murderers; the
priests were prevented from holding too much land, and so
becoming too powerful ; and Justices of the Peace were first
appointed (though not at first under that name) in various
parts of the country.
And now we come to Scotland, which was the great and
lasting trouble of the reign of King Edward the First.
About thirteen years after King Edward's coronation,
Alexander the Third, the King of Scotland, died of a fall
from his horse. He had been married to Margaret, King
Edward's sister. All their children being dead, the Scottish
crown became the right of a young Princess only eight years
i6o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
old, the daughter of Eric, King of Norway, who had married
a daughter of the deceased sovereign. King Edward proposed,
that the Maiden of Norway, as this Princess was called, should
be engaged to be married to his eldest son ; but, unfortunately,
as she was coming over to England she fell sick, and landing
on one of the Orkney Islands, died there. A great commotion
immediately began in Scotland, where as many as thirteen
noisy claimants to the vacant throne started up and made a
general confusion.
King Edward being much renowned for his sagacity and
justice, it seems to have been agreed to refer the dispute to
him. He accepted the trust, and went, with an army, to the
Border-land where England and Scotland joined. There, he
called upon the Scottish gentlemen to meet him at the Castle
of Norham, on the English side of the river Tweed ; and to
that Castle they came. But, before he would take any step
in the business, he required those Scottish gentlemen, one and
all, to do homage to him as their superior Lord ; and when
they hesitated, he said, "By holy Edward, whose crown I
wear, I will have my rights, or I will die in maintaining them ! "
The Scottish gentlemen, who had not expected this, were dis-
concerted, and asked for three weeks to think about it.
At the end of the three weeks, another meeting took place,
on a green plain on the Scottish side of the river. Of all the
competitors for the Scottish throne, there were only two who
had any real claim, in right of their near kindred to the Royal
family. These were JOHN Baliol and Robert Bruce : and
the right was, I have no doubt, on the side of John Baliol. At
this particular meeting John Bahol was not present, but Robert
Bruce was ; and on Robert Bruce being formally asked whether
he acknowledged the King of England for his superior lord, he
answered, plainly and distinctly, Yes, he did. Next day, John
Baliol appeared, and said the same. This point settled, some
arrangements were made for inquiring into their titles.
The inquiry occupied a pretty long time — more than a year.
While it was going on. King Edward took the opportunity
of making a journey through Scotland, and calling upon the
Scottish people of all degrees to acknowledge themselves his
vassals, or be imprisoned until they did. In the meanwhile,
EDWARD THE FIRST i6i
Commissioners were appointed to conduct the inquiry, a Parlia-
ment was held at Berwick about it, the two claimants were heard
at full length, and there was a vast amount of talking. At last,
in the great hall of the Castle of Berwick, the King gave judg-
ment in favour of John Baliol : who, consenting to receive his
crown by the King of England's favour and permission, was
crowned at Scone, in an old stone chair which had been used
for ages in the abbey there, at the coronations of Scottish Kings.
Then, King Edward caused the great seal of Scotland, used
since the late King's death, to be broken in four pieces, and
placed in the English Treasury; and considered that he now
had Scotland (according to the common saying) under his
thumb.
Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, however. King
Edward, determined that the Scottish King should not forget
he was his vassal, summoned him repeatedly to come and
defend himself and his Judges before the English ParHament
when appeals from the decisions of Scottish courts of justice
were being heard. At length, John Baliol, who had no great
heart of his own, had so much heart put into him by the brave
spirit of the Scottish people, who took this as a national insult,
that he refused to come any more. Thereupon, the King further
required him to help him in his war abroad (which was then in
progress), and to give up, as security for his good behaviour in
future, the three strong Scottish Castles of Jedburgh, Roxburgh,
and Berwick. Nothing of this being done ; on the contrary, the
Scottish people concealing their King among their mountains in
the Highlands and showing a determination to resist, Edward
marched to Berwick with an army of thirty thousand foot, and
four thousand horse ; took the Castle, and slew its whole garrison,
and the inhabitants of the town as well — men, women, and
children. LORD Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, then went on to
the Castle of Dunbar, before which a battle was fought, and the
whole Scottish army defeated with great slaughter. The victory
being complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as guardian of
Scotland ; the principal offices in that kingdom were given to
Englishmen ; the more powerful Scottish Nobles were obliged
to come and live in England ; the Scottish crown and sceptre
were brought away ; and even the old stone chair was carried
L
i62 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
THE HEAD OF WALLACE ON LONDON BRIDGE
off and placed in Westminster Abbey, where you may see it now.
Baliol had the Tower of London lent him for a residence, with
permission to range about within a circle of twenty miles. Three
years afterwards he was allowed to go to Normandy, where he
had estates, and where he passed the remaining six years of his
life : far more happily, I dare say, than he had lived for a long
while in angry Scotland.
Now, there was, in the West of Scotland, a gentleman of
small fortune, named WILLIAM WALLACE, the second son of
a Scottish knight. He was a man of great size and great
strength ; he was very brave and daring ; when he spoke to a
body of his countrymen, he could rouse them in a wonderful
manner' by the power of his burning words ; he loved Scotland
dearly, and he hated England with his utmost might. The
domineering conduct of the English who now held the places of
trust in Scotland made them as intolerable to the proud Scottish
people as they had been, under similar circumstances, to the
Welsh ; and no man in all Scotland regarded them with so much
smothered rage as William Wallace. One day, an Englishman
EDWARD THE FIRST 163
in office, little knowing what he was, affronted him. Wallace
instantly struck him dead, and taking refuge among the rocks
and hills, and there joining with his countryman, SiR William
Douglas, who was also in arms against King Edward, became
the most resolute and undaunted champion of a people strug-
gling for their independence that ever lived upon the earth.
The English Guardian of the Kingdom fled before him, and,
thus encouraged, the Scottish people revolted everywhere, and
fell upon the English without mercy. The Earl of Surrey, by
the King's commands, raised all the power of the Border-
counties, and two English armies poured into Scotland. Only
one Chief, in the face of those armies, stood by Wallace, who,
with a force of forty thousand men, awaited the invaders at a
place on the river Forth, within two miles of Stirling. Across
the river there was only one poor wooden bridge, called the
bridge of Kildean — so narrow, that but two men could cross it
abreast. With his eyes upon this bridge, Wallace posted the
greater part of his men among some rising grounds, and waited
calmly. When the English army came up on the opposite
bank of the river, messengers were sent forward to offer terms.
Wallace sent them back with a defiance, in the name of the
freedom of Scotland. Some of the oiificers of the Earl of Surrey
in command of the English, with their eyes also on the bridge,
advised him to be discreet and not hasty. He, however, urged
to immediate battle by some other officers, and particularly by
Cressingham, King Edward's treasurer, and a rash man,
gave the word of command to advance. One thousand English
crossed the bridge, two abreast ; the Scottish troops were as
motionless as stone images. Two thousand English crossed ;
three thousand, four thousand, five. Not a feather, all this time,
had been seen to stir among the Scottish bonnets. Now, they
all fluttered. " Forward, one party, to the foot of the Bridge ! "
cried Wallace, " and let no more English cross ! The rest,
down with me on the five thousand who have come over,
and cut them all to pieces ! " It was done, in the sight of the
whole remainder of the English army, who could give no help.
Cressingham himself was killed, and the Scotch made whips
for their horses of his skin.
King Edward was abroad at this time, and during the sue-
i64 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
cesses on the Scottish side which followed, and which enabled
bold Wallace to win the whole country back again, and even to
ravage the English borders. But, after a few winter months,
the King returned, and took the field .with more than his usual
energy. One night, when a kick from his horse as they both lay
on the ground together broke two ribs, and a cry arose that he
was killed, he leaped into his saddle, regardless of the pain he
suffered, and rode through the camp. Day then appearing, he
gave the word (still, of course, in that bruised and aching state)
Forward! and led his army on to near Falkirk, where the
Scottish forces were seen drawn up on some stony ground,
behind a morass. Here, he defeated Wallace, and killed fifteen
thousand of his men. With the shattered remainder, Wallace
drew back to Stirling ; but, being pursued, set fire to the town
that it might give no help to the English, and escaped. The
inhabitants of Perth afterwards set fire to their houses for the
same reason, and the King, unable to find provisions, was forced
to withdraw his army.
Another Robert Bruce, the grandson of him who had
disputed the Scottish crown with Baliol, was now in arms against
the King (that elder Bruce being dead), and also John Comyn,
Baliol's nephew. These two young men might agree in
opposing Edward, but could agree in nothing else, as they were
rivals for the throne of Scotland. Probably it was because they
knew this, and knew what troubles must arise even if they
could hope to get the better of the great English King, that the
principal Scottish people applied to the Pope for his interference.
The Pope, on the principle of losing nothing for want of trying
to get it, very coolly claimed that Scotland belonged to him ;
but this was a little too much, and the Parliament in a friendly
manner told him so.
In the spring time of the year one thousand three hundred
and three, the King sent SiR JOHN Segrave, whom he made
Governor of Scotland, with twenty thousand men, to reduce the
rebels. Sir John was not as careful as he should have been, but
encamped at Rosslyn, near Edinburgh, with his army divided
into three parts. The Scottish forces saw their advantage ; fell
on each part separately ; defeated each ; and killed all the
prisoners. Then, came the King himself once more, as soon as
EDWARD THE FIRST 165
a great army could be raised ; he passed through the whole
north of Scotland, laying waste whatsoever came in his way ;
and he took up his winter quarters at Dunfermline. The
Scottish cause now looked so hopeless, that Comyn and the
other nobles made submission and received their pardons.
Wallace alone stood out. He was invited to surrender, though
on no distinct pledge that his Hfe should be spared ; but he still
defied the ireful King, and lived among the steep crags of the
Highland glens, where the eagles made their nests, and where
the mountain torrents roared, and the white snow was deep, and
the bitter winds blew round his unsheltered head, as he lay
through many a pitch-dark night wrapped up in his plaid.
Nothing could break his spirit ; nothing could lower his courage ;
nothing could induce him to forget or to forgive his country's
wrongs. Even when the Castle of Stirling, which had long held
out, was besieged by the King with every kind of military engine
then in use ; even when the lead upon cathedral roofs was taken
down to help to make them ; even when the King, though an
old man, commanded in the siege as if he were a youth, being
so resolved to conquer; even when the brave garrison (then
found with amazement to be not two hundred people, including
several ladies) were starved and beaten out and were made to
submit on their knees, and with every form of disgrace that
could aggravate their sufferings ; even then, when there was not
a ray of hope in Scotland, William Wallace was as proud and
firm as if he had beheld the powerful and rentless Edward lying
dead at his feet.
Who betrayed William Wallace in the end, is not quite
certain. That he was betrayed — probably by an attendant —
is too true. He was taken to the Castle of Dumbarton, under
Sir John Menteith, and thence to London, where the great
fame of his bravery and resolution attracted immense concourses
of people to behold him. He was tried in Westminster Hall,
with a crown of laurel on his head — it is supposed because he
was reported to have said that he ought to wear, or that he
would wear, a crown there — and was found guilty as a robber,
a murderer, and a traitor. What they called a robber, (he said
to those who tried him) he was, because he had taken spoil from
the King's men. What they called a murderer, he was, because
i66 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
he had slain an insolent Englishman. What they called a traitor,
he was not, for he had never sworn allegiance to the King, and
had ever scorned to do it. He was dragged at the tails of horses
to West Smithfield, and there hanged on a high gallows, torn
open before he was dead, beheaded, and quartered. His head
was set upon a pole on London Bridge, his right arm was sent
to Newcastle, his left arm to Berwick, his legs to Perth and
Aberdeen. But, if King Edward had had his body cut into
inches, and had sent every separate inch into a separate town,
he could not have dispersed it half so far and wide as his fame.
Wallace will be remembered in songs and stories, while there
are songs and stories in the English tongue, and Scotland will
hold him dear while her lakes and mountains last.
Released from this dreaded enemy, the King made a fairer
plan of Government for Scotland, divided the offices of honour
among Scottish gentlemen and English gentlemen, forgave past
offences, and thought, in his old age, that his work was done.
But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce conspired, and
made an appointment to meet at Dumfries, in the church of the
Minorites. There is a story that Comyn was false to Bruce, and
had informed against him to the King ; that Bruce was warned
of his danger and the necessity of flight, by receiving, one night
as he sat at supper, from his friend the Earl of Gloucester, twelve
pennies and a pair of spurs ; that as he was riding angrily to
keep his appointment (through a snowstorm, with his horse's
shoes reversed that he might not be tracked), he met an evil-
looking serving man, a messenger of Comyn, whom he killed,
and concealed in whose dress he found letters that proved
Comyn's treachery. However this may be, they were likely
enough to quarrel in any case, being hot-headed rivals ; and,
whatever they quarrelled about, they certainly did quarrel in
the church where they met, and Bruce drew his dagger and
stabbed Comyn, who fell upon the pavement. When Bruce
came out, pale and disturbed, the friends who were waiting for
him asked what was the matter ? "I think I have killed Comyn,"
said he. " You only think so ? " returned one of them ; " I will
make sure ! " and going into the church, and finding him alive,
stabbed him again and again. Knowing that the King would
never forgive this new deed of violence, the party then declared
COMYN STABBED BY BRUCE
EDWARD THE FIRST 169
Bruce King of Scotland ; got him crowned at Scone— without
the chair ; and set up the rebellious standard once again.
When the King heard of it he kindled with fiercer anger than
he had ever shown yet. He caused the Prince of Wales and two
hundred and seventy of the young nobility to be knighted — the
trees in the Temple Gardens were cut down to make room for
their tents, and they watched their armour all night, according
to the old usage: some in the Temple Church, some in West-
minster Abbey — and at the public Feast which then took place,
he swore, by Heaven, and by two swans covered with gold net-
work which his minstrels placed upon the table, that he would
avenge the death of Comyn, and would punish the false Bruce.
And before all the company, he charged the Prince his son, in
case that he should die before accomplishing his vow, not to
bury him until it was fulfilled. Next morning the Prince and
the rest of the young Knights rode away to the Border-country
to join the English army ; and the King, now weak and sick,
followed in a horse-litter.
Bruce, after losing a battle and undergoing many dangers
and much misery, fled to Ireland, where he lay concealed
through the winter. That winter, Edward passed in hunting
down and executing Bruce's relations and adherents, sparing
neither youth nor age, and showing no touch of pity or sign of
mercy. In the following spring, Bruce reappeared and gained
some victories. In these frays, both sides were grievously
cruel. For instance — Bruce's two brothers, being taken captives
desperately wounded, were ordered by the King to instant
execution. Bruce's friend Sir John Douglas, taking his own
Castle of Douglas out of the hands of an English lord, roasted
the dead bodies of the slaughtered garrison in a great fire made
of every movable within it; which dreadful cookery his men
called the Douglas Larder. Bruce, still successful, however,
drove the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Gloucester into the
Castle of Ayr and laid siege to it.
The King, who had been laid up all the winter, but had
directed the army from his sick-bed, now advanced to Carlisle,
and there, causing the litter in which he had travelled to be
placed in the Cathedral as an offering to Heaven, mounted his
horse once more, and for the last time. He was now sixty-nine
lyo A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
years old, and had reign«d thirty-five years. He was so ill, that
in four days he could go no more than six miles ; still, even at
that pace, he went on and resolutely kept his face towards the
Border. At length, he lay down at the village of Burgh-upon-
Sands ; and there, telling those around him to impress upon the
Prince that he was to remember his father's vow, and was never
to rest until he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, he yielded up
his last breath.
CHAPTER XVII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND
King Edward the Second, the first Prince of Wales, was twenty-
three years old when his father died. There was a certain
favourite of his, a young man from Gascony, named PlERS
Gaveston, of whom his father had so much disapproved that
he had ordered him out of England, and had made his son
swear by the side of his sick-bed, never to bring him back.
But, the Prince no sooner found himself King, than he broke
his oath, as so many other Princes and Kings did (they were
far too ready to take oaths), and sent for his dear friend
immediately.
Now, this same Gaveston was handsome enough, but was
a reckless, insolent, audacious fellow. He was detested by the
proud English Lords : not only because he had such power
over the King, and made the Court such a dissipated place, but,
also, because he could ride better than they at tournaments, and
was used, in his impudence, to cut very bad jokes on them ;
calling one, the old hog ; another, the stage-player ; another,
the Jew ; another, the black dog of Ardenne. This was as
poor wit as need be, but it made those Lords very wroth ; and
the surly Earl of Warwick, who was the black dog, swore that
the time should come when Piers Gaveston should feel the black
dog's teeth,
It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem to be coming.
The King made him Earl of Cornwall, and gave him vast
riches ; and, when the King went over to France to marry the
French Princess, ISABELLA, daughter of PHILIP LE Bel, who
EDWARD THE SECOND 171
was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world, he made
Gaveston, Regent of the Kingdom. His splendid marriage-
ceremony in the Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, where there
were four Kings and three Queens present (quite a pack of
Court Cards, for I dare say the Knaves were not wanting), being
over, he seemed to care little or nothing for his beautiful wife ;
but was wild with impatience to meet Gaveston again.
When he landed at home, he paid no attention to anybody
else, but ran into the favourite's arms before a great concourse
of people, and hugged him, and kissed him, and called him his
brother. At the coronation which soon followed, Gaveston
was the richest and brightest of all the glittering company
there, and had the honour of carrying the crown. This made
the proud Lords fiercer than ever ; the people, too, despised the
favourite, and would never call him Earl of Cornwall, however
much he complained to the King and asked him to punish
them for not doing so, but persisted in styling him plain Piers
Gaveston.
The Barons were so unceremonious with the King in giving
him, to understand that they would not bear this favourite, that
the King was obliged to send him out of the country. The
favourite himself was made to take an oath (more oaths !) that
he would never come back, and the Barons supposed him to
be banished in disgrace, until they heard that he was appointed
Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough for the be-
sotted King, who brought him home again in a year's time,
and not only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting
folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, who never liked him
afterwards.
He had now the old Royal want — of money — and the Barons
had the new power of positively refusing to let him raise any. He
summoned a Parliament at York ; the Barons refused to make
one, while the favourite was near him. He summoned another
Parliament at Westminster, and sent Gaveston away. Then,
the Barons came, completely armed, and appointed a Com-
mittee of themselves to correct abuses in the state and in the
King's household. He got some money on these conditions,
and directly set off with Gaveston to the Border-country, where
they spent it in idling away the time, and feasting, while Bruce
172 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
made ready to drive the English out of Scotland. For, though
the old King had even made this poor weak son of his swear
(as some say) that he would not bury his bones, but would have
them boiled clean in a caldron, and carried before the English
army until Scotland was entirely subdued, the second Edward
was so unlike the first that Bruce gained strength and power
every day.
The committee of Nobles, after some months of deliberation,
ordained that the King should henceforth call a Parliament
together, once every year, and even twice if necessary, instead
of summoning it only when he chose. Further, that Gaveston
should once more be banished, and, this time, on pain of death
if he ever came back. The King's tears were of no avail ; he
was obliged to send his favourite to Flanders. As soon as he
had done so, however, he dissolved the Parliament, with the low
cunning of a mere fool, and set off to the North of England,
thinking to get an army about him to oppose the Nobles. And
once again he brought Gaveston home, and heaped upon him
all the riches and titles of which the Barons had deprived
him.
The Lords saw, now, that there was nothing for it but to
put the favourite to death. They could have done so, legally,
according to the terms of his banishment ; but they did so, I
am sorry to say, in a shabby manner. Led by the Earl of
Lancaster, the King's cousin, they first of all attacked the King
and Gaveston at Newcastle. They had time to escape by sea,
and the mean King, having his precious Gaveston with him,
was quite content to leave his lovely wife behind. When they
were comparatively safe, they separated ; the King went to
York to collect a force of soldiers ; and the favourite shut him-
self up, in the meantime, in Scarborough Castle overlooking the
sea. This was what the Barons wanted. They knew that the
Castle could not hold out ; they attacked it, and made Gaveston
surrender. He delivered himself up to the Earl of Pembroke
— that Lord whom he had called the Jew — on the Earl's pledg-
ing his faith and knightly word, that no harm should happen
to him and no violence be done him.
Now, it was agreed with Gaveston, that he should be taken
to the Castle of Wallingford, and there kept in honourable
EDWARD THE SECOND 173
custody. They travelled as far as Dedington, near Banbury,
where, in the Castle of that place, they stopped for a night to
rest. Whether the Earl of Pembroke left his prisoner there,
knowing what would happen, or really left him thinking no
harm, and only going (as he pretended) to visit his wife, the
Countess, who was in the neighbourhood, is no great matter
now ; in any case, he was bound as an honourable gentleman
to protect his prisoner, and he did not do it. In the morning,
while the favourite was yet in bed, he was required to dress
himself and come down into the court-yard. He did so without
any mistrust, but started and turned pale when he found it full
of strange armed men. " I think you know me ? " said their
leader, also armed from head to foot. " I am the black dog of
Ardenne ! "
The time was come when Piers Gaveston was to feel the
black dog's teeth indeed. They set him on a mule, and carried
him, in mock state and with military music, to the black dog's
kennel — Warwick Castle — where a hasty council, composed of
some great noblemen, considered what should be done with
him. Some were for sparing him, but one loud voice — it was
the black dog's bark, I dare say — sounded through the Castle
Hall, uttering these words : " You have the fox in your power.
Let him go now, and you must hunt him again."
They sentenced him to death. He threw himself at the feet
of the Earl of Lancaster — the old hog — but the old hog was as
savage as the dog. He was taken out upon the pleasant road,
leading from Warwick to Coventry, where the beautiful river
Avon, by which, long afterwards, WiLLlAM SHAKESPEARE was
born and now lies buried, sparkled in the bright landscape of
the beautiful May day ; and there they struck off his wretched
head, and stained the dust with his blood.
When the King heard of this black deed, in his grief and
rage he denounced relentless war against his Barons, and both
sides were in arms for half a year. But, it then became necessary
for them to join their forces against Bruce, who had used the
time well while they were divided, and had now a great power
in Scotland.
Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then besieging
Stirling Castle, and that the Governor had been obliged to
174 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Scottish Warrior
pledge himself to surrender
it, unless he should be re-
lieved before a certain day.
Hereupon, the Kingordered
the nobles and their fight-
ing-men to meet him at
Berwick ; but, the nobles
cared so little for the King,
and so neglected the sum-
mons, and lost time, that
only on the day before that
appointed for the surrender,
did the King find himself at
Stirling, and even then with
a smaller force than he had
expected. However, he
had, altogether, a hundred
thousand men, and Bruce
had not more than forty
thousand; but,Bruce's army
was strongly posted in three
square columns, on the
ground lying between the
Burn or Brook of Bannock
and the walls of Stirling
Castle.
On the very evening,
when the King came up,
Bruce did a brave act that
encouraged his men. He
was seen by a certain
Henry de Bohun, an
English Knight, riding
about before his army on
a little horse, with a light
battle-axe in his hand, and
a crown of gold on his head.
This English Knight, who
was mounted on a strong
EDWARD THE SECOND 175
war-horse, cased in steel, strongly armed, and able (as he
thought) to overthrow Bruce by crushing him with his mere
weight, set spurs to his great charger, rode on him, and made
a thrust at him with his heavy spear. Bruce parried the thrust,
and with one blow of his battle-axe split his skull.
The Scottish men did not forget this, next day when the
battle raged. Randolph, Bruce's valiant Nephew, rode, with
the small body of men he commanded, into such a host of the
English, all shining in polished armour in the sunlight, that they
seemed to be swallowed up and lost, as if they had plunged into
the sea. But, they fought so well, and did such dreadful
execution, that the English staggered. Then came Bruce
himself upon them, with all the rest of his army. While they
were thus hard pressed and amazed, there appeared upon the. hills
what they supposed to be a new Scottish army, but what were
really only the camp followers, in number fifteen thousand :
whom Bruce had taught to show themselves at that place and
time. The Earl of Gloucester, commanding the English horse,
made a last rush to change the fortune of the day ; but Bruce
(like Jack the Giant-killer in the story) had had pits dug in the
ground, and covered over with turfs and stakes. Into these, as
they gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders and
horses rolled by hundreds. The English were completely
routed ; all their treasure, stores, and engines, were taken by
the Scottish men ; so many waggons and other wheeled vehicles
were seized, that it is related that they would have reached, if
they had been drawn out in a line, one hundred and eighty
miles. The fortunes of Scotland, were, for the time, completely
changed ; aud never was a battle won, more famous upon
Scottish ground, than this great battle of Bannockburn.
Plague and famine succeeded in England ; and still the
powerless King and his disdainful Lords were always in con-
tention. Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made proposals
to Bruce, to accept the rule of that country. He sent his
brother Edward to them, who was crowned King of Ireland.
,He afterwards went himself to help his brother in his Irish wars,
but his brother was defeated in the end and killed. Robert
Bruce, returning to Scotland, still increased his strength there.
As the King's ruin had begun in a favourite, so it seemed
176 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
likely to end in one. He was too poor a creature to rely at all
upon himself; and his new favourite was one HUGH LE
Despenser, the son of a gentleman of ancient family. Hugh
was handsome and brave, but he was the favourite of a weak
King, whom no man cared a rush for, and that was a dangerous
place to hold. The Nobles leagued against him, because the
King liked him ; and they lay in wait, both for his ruin and his
father's. Now, the King had married him to the daughter of
the late Earl of Gloucester, and had given both him and his
father great possessions in Wales. In their endeavours to extend
these, they gave violent offence to an angry Welsh gentleman,
named John de Mowbray, and to divers other angry Welsh
gentlemen, who resorted to arms, took their castles, and seized
their estates. The Earl of Lancaster had first placed the
favourite (who was a poor relation of his own) at Court, and he
considered his own dignity offended by the preference he
received and the honours he acquired; so he, and the Barons
who were his friends, joined the Welshmen, marched on London,
and sent a message to the King demanding to have the favourite
and his father banished. At first, the King unaccountably took
it into his head to be spirited, and to send them a bold reply ;
but when they quartered themselves around Holborn and
Clerkenwell, and went down, armed, to the Parliament at
Westminster, he gave way, and complied with their demands.
His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected. It arose
out of an accidental circumstance. The beautiful Queen happen-
ing to be travelling, came one night to one of the royal castles,
and demanded to be lodged and entertained there until morning.
The governor of this castle, who was one of the enraged lords,
was away, and in his absence, his wife refused admission to the
Queen ; a scuffle took place among the common men on either
side, and some of the royal attendants were killed. The people,
who cared nothing for the King, were very angry that their
beautiful Queen should be thus rudely treated in her own
dominions ; and the King, taking advantage of this feeling,
besieged the castle, took it, and then called the two Despensers
home. Upon this, the confederate lords and the Welshmen
went over to Bruce. The King encountered them at Borough-
bridge, gained the victory, and took a number of distinguished
EDWARD THE SECOND 177
prisoners ; among them, the Earl of Lancaster, now an old
man, upon whose destruction he was resolved. This Earl
was taken to his own castle of Pontefract, and there tried and
found guilty by an unfair court appointed for the purpose ; he
was not even allowed to speak in his own defence. He was
insulted, pelted, mounted on a starved pony without saddle
or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. Eight-and-twenty knights
were hanged, drawn, and quartered. When the King had de-
spatched this bloody work, and had made a fresh and a long
truce with Bruce, he took the Despensers into greater favour
than ever, and made the father Earl of Winchester.
One prisoner, and an important one, who was taken at
Boroughbridge, made his escape, however, and turned the
tide against the King. ' This was Roger Mortimer, always
resolutely opposed to him, who was sentenced to death, and
placed for safe custody in the Tower of London. He treated
his guards to a quantity of wine into which he had put a
sleeping potion ; and, when they were insensible, broke out
of his dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the chimney,
let himself down from the roof of the building with a rope-
ladder, passed the sentries, got down to the river, and made
away in a boat to where servants and horses were waiting for
him. He finally escaped to France, where CHARLES LE Bel,
the brother of the beautiful Queen, was King. Charles sought
to quarrel with the King of England, on pretence of his not
having come to do him homage at his coronation. It was
proposed that the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange
the dispute ; she went, and wrote home to the King, that as
he was sick and could not come to France himself, perhaps
it would be better to send over the young Prince, their son,
who was only twelve years old, who could do homage to her
brother in his stead, and in whose company she would im-
mediately return. The King sent him : but, both he and the
Queen remained at the French Court, and Roger Mortimer
became the Queen's lover.
When the King wrote, again and again, to the Queen to
come home, she did not reply that she despised him too much
to live with him any more (which was the truth), but said she
was afraid of the two Despensers, In short, her design was
; M
178 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to overthrow the favourites' power, and the King's power,
such as it was, and invade England. Having obtained a
French force of two thousand men, and being joined by all
the English exiles then in France, she landed, within a year,
at Orewell, in Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by
the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, the King's two brothers; by
other powerful noblemen ; and lastly, by the first English
general who was despatched to check her : who went over
to her with all his men. The people of London, receiving
these tidings, would do nothing for the King, but broke open
the Tower, let out all his prisoners, and threw up their caps
and hurrahed for the beautiful Queen.
The King, with his two favourites, fled to Bristol, where he
left old Despenser in charge of the town and castle, while he
went on with the son to Wales. The Bristol men being opposed
to the King, and it being impossible to hold the town with
enemies everywhere within the walls, Despenser yielded it up
on the third day, and was instantly brought to trial for having
traitorously influenced what was called " the King's mind " —
though I doubt if the King ever had any. He was a venerable
old man, upwards of ninety years of age, but his age gained
no respect or mercy. He was hanged, torn open while he was
yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown to the dogs. His son
was soon taken, tried at Hereford before the same judge on
a long series of foolish charges, found guilty, and hanged upon
a gallows fifty feet high, with a chaplet of nettles round his
head. His poor old father and he were innocent enough of
any worse crimes than the crime of having been friends of
a King, on whom, as a mere man, they would never have
deigned to cast a favourable look. It is a bad crime, I know,
and leads to worse ; but, many lords and gentlemen — I even
think some ladies, too, if I recollect right — have committed it
in England, who have neither been given to the dogs, nor
hanged up fifty feet high.
The wretched King was running here and there, all this
time, and never getting anywhere in particular, until he gave
himself up, and was taken off" to Kenilworth Castle. When
he was safely lodged there, the Queen went to London and
met the Parliament. And the Bishop of Hereford, who was
EDWARD THE SECOND 179
the most skilful of her friends, said, What was to be done now ?
Here was an imbecile, indolent, miserable King upon the throne ;
wouldn't it be better to take him off, and put his son there
instead ? I don't know whether the Queen really pitied him
at this pass, but she began to cry ; so, the Bishop said. Well,
my Lords and Gentlemen, what do you think, upon the whole,
of sending down to Kenilworth, and seeing if His Majesty
(God bless him, and forbid we should depose him !) won't
resign ?
My Lords and Gentlemen thought it a good notion, so a
deputation of them went down to Kenilworth ; and there the
King came into the great hall of the Castle, commonly dressed
in a poor black gown ; and when he saw a certain bishop among
them, fell down, poor feeble-headed man, and made a wretched
spectacle of himself. Somebody lifted him up, and then SiR
William Trussel, the Speaker of the House of Commons,
almost frightened him to death by making him a tremendous
speech, to the effect that he was no longer a King, and that
everybody renounced allegiance to him. After which, SiR
Thomas Blount, the Steward of the Household, nearly
finished him, by coming forward and breaking his white wand
— which was a ceremony only performed at a King's death.
Being asked in this pressing manner what he thought of re-
signing, the King said he thought it was the best thing he could
do. So, he did it, and they proclaimed his son next day.
I wish I could close his history by saying that he lived a
harmless life in the Castle and the Castle gardens at Kenilworth,
many years — that he had a favourite, and plenty to eat and
drink — and, having that, wanted nothing. But he was shame-
fully humiliated. He was outraged, and slighted, and had dirty
water from ditches given him to shave with, and wept and said
he would have clean warm water, and was altogether very
miserable. He was moved from this castle to that castle, and
from that castle to the other castle, because this lord or that
lord, or the other lord, was too kind to him : until at last he
came to Berkeley Castle, near the River Severn, where (the
Lord Berkeley being then ill and absent) he fell into the hands
of two black ruffians, called THOMAS GOURNAY, and WiLLlAM
Ogle,
i8o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
One night — it was the night of September the twenty-first,
one thousand three hundred and twenty-seven — dreadful screams
were heard, by the startled people in the neighbouring town,
ringing through the thick walls of the Castle, and the dark deep
night ; and they said, as they were thus horribly awakened from
their sleep, " May Heaven be merciful to the King ; for those
cries forbode that no good is being done to him in his dismal
prison ! " Next morning he was dead — not bruised, or stabbed, or
marked upon the body, but much distorted in the face ; and it
was whispered afterwards, that those two villains, Gournay and
Ogle, had burnt up his inside with a red-hot iron.
If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the centre tower
of its beautiful Cathedral, with its four rich pinnacles, rising
lightly in the air, you may remember that the wretched
Edward the Second was buried in the old abbey of that ancient
city, at forty-three years old, after being for nineteen years and
a half a perfectly incapable King.
CHAPTER XVIII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD
Roger Mortimer, the Queen's lover (who escaped to France
in the last chapter), was far from profiting by the examples he
had had of the fate of favourites. Having, through the Queen's
influence, come into possession of the estates of the two
Despensers, he became extremely proud and ambitious, and
sought to be the real ruler of England. The young King, who
was crowned at fourteen years of age with all the usual solem-
nities, resolved not to bear this, and soon pursued Mortimer to
his ruin.
The people themselves were not fond of Mortimer — first,
because he was a Royal favourite ; secondly, because he was
supposed to have helped to make a peace with Scotland which
now took place, and in virtue of which the young King's sister
Joan, only seven years old, was promised in marriage to David,
the son and heir of Robert Bruce, who was only five years old.
The nobles hated Mortimer because of his pride, riches, and
EDWARD THE THIRD
i8i
power. They went so far as to take up arms against him ; but
were obliged to submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those who
did so, but who afterwards went over to Mortimer and the
Queen, was made an example of in the following cruel manner :
He seems to have been anything but a wise old earl ; and
he was persuaded by the agents of the favourite and the Queen,
that poor King Edward the Second was not really dead ; and
thus was betrayed into writing letters favouring his rightful
claim to the throne. This was made out to be high treason,
and he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be executed.
They took the poor old lord outside the town of Winchester,
and there kept him waiting some three or four hours until they
could find somebody to cut off his head. At last, a convict
said he would do it, if the government would pardon him in
return ; and they gave him the pardon ; and at one blow he put
the Earl of Kent out of his last suspense.
While the Queen was in France, she had found a lovely and
good young lady, named Philippa, who she thought would
make an excellent wife for her son. The young King married
this lady, soon after he came to the throne ; and her first child,
1 82 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards became celebrated, as we
shall presently see, under the famous title of EDWARD THE
Black Prince.
The young King, thinking the time ripe for the downfall of
Mortimer, took counsel with Lord Montacute how he should
proceed. A Parliament was going to be held at Nottingham,
and that lord recommended that the favourite should be seized
by night in Nottingham Castle, where he was sure to be. Now,
this, like many other things, was more easily said than done ;
because, to guard against treachery, the great gates of the
Castle were locked every night, and the great keys were carried
up-stairs to the Queen, who laid them under her own pillow.
But the Castle had a governor, and the governor being Lord
Montacute's friend, confided to him how he knew of a secret
passage under-ground, hidden from observation by the weeds
and brambles with which it was overgrown ; and how, through
that passage, the conspirators might enter in the dead of the
night, and go straight to Mortimer's room. Accordingly, upon
a certain dark night, at midnight, they made their way through
this dismal place : startling the rats, and frightening the owls
and bats : and came safely to the bottom of the main tower
of the Castle, where the King met them, and took them up a
profoundly-dark staircase in a deep silence. They soon heard
the voice of Mortimer in council with some friends ; and
bursting into the room with a sudden noise, took him prisoner.
The Queen cried out from her bed-chamber, " Oh, my sweet
son, my dear son, spare my gentle Mortimer ! " They carried
him off, however ; and, before the next Parliament, accused
him of having made differences between the young King and
his mother, and of having brought about the death of the Earl
of Kent, and even of the late King ; for, as you know by this
time, when they wanted to get rid of a man in those old days,
they were not very particular of what they accused him.
Mortimer was found guilty of all this, and was sentenced to be
hanged at Tyburn. The King shut his mother up in genteel
confinement, where she passed the rest of her life ; and now he
became King in earnest.
The first effort he made was to conquer Scotland. The
English lords who had lands in Scotland, finding that their
EDWARD THE THIRD 183
rights were not respected under the late peace, made war on
their own account, choosing for their general, Edward, the son of
John Baliol, who made such a vigorous. fight, that in less than
two months he won the whole Scottish Kingdom. He was
joined, when thus triumphant, by the King and Parliament ;
and he and the King in person besieged the Scottish forces in
Berwick. The whole Scottish army coming to the assistance
of their countrymen, such a furious battle ensued, that thirty
thousand men are said to have been killed in it. Baliol was
then crowned King of Scotland, doing homage to the King of
England ; but little^ came of his successes after all, for the
Scottish men rose against him, within no very long time,
and David Bruce came back within ten years and took his
kingdom.
France was a far richer country than Scotland, and the
King had a much greater mind to conquer it. So, he let
Scotland alone, and pretended that he had a claim to the
French throne in right of his mother. He had, in reality, no
claim at all ; but that mattered little in those times. He
brought over to his cause many little princes and sovereigns,
and even courted the alliance of the people of Flanders — a busy,
working community, who had very small respect for kings, and
whose head man was a brewer. With such forces as he
raised by these means, Edward invaded France ; but he did
little by that, except run into debt in carrying on the war to
the extent of three hundred thousand pounds. The next year
he did better ; gaining a great sea-fight in the harbour of Sluys.
This success, however, was very short-lived, for the Flemings
took fright at the siege of Saint Omer and ran away, leaving
their weapons and baggage behind them. Philip, the French
King, coming up with his army, and Edward being very anxious
to decide the war, proposed to settle the difference by single
combat with him, or by a fight of one hundred knights on each
side. The French King said, he thanked him ; but being very
well as he was, he would rather not. So, after some skirmishing
and talking, a short peace was made.
It was soon broken by King Edward's favouring the cause
of John, Earl of Montford ; a French nobleman, who asserted
a claim of his own against the French .King, and offered to do
1 84 A CHIL.D'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
homage to England for the crown of France, if he could obtain
it through England's help. This French lord, himself, was soon
defeated by the French King's son, and shut up in a tower in
Paris ; but his wife, a courageous and beautiful woman, who is
said to have had the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion,
assembled the people of Brittany, where she then was ; and, show-
ing them her infant son, made many pathetic entreaties to them
not to desert her and their young Lord. They took fire at this
appeal, and rallied round her in the strong castle of Hennebon.
Here she was not only besieged without by the French under
Charles de Blois, but was endangered within by a dreary old
bishop, who was always representing to the people what horrors
they must undergo if they were faithful — first from famine, and
afterwards from fire and sword. But this noble lady, whose
heart never failed her, encouraged her soldiers by her own
example ; went from post to post like a great general ; even
mounted on horseback fully armed, and, issuing from the castle
by a by-path, fell upon the French camp, set fire to the tents,
and threw the whole force into disorder. This done, she got
safely back to Hennebon again, and was received with loud
shouts of joy by the defenders of the castle, who had given her
up for lost. As they were now very short of provisions,
however, and as they could not dine off enthusiasm, and as the
old bishop was always saying, " I told you what it would come
to ! " they began to lose heart, and to talk of yielding the castle
up. The brave Countess retiring to an upper room and looking
with great grief out to sea, where she expected relief from
England, saw, at this very time, the English ships in the distance,
and was relieved and rescued ! Sir Walter Manning, the
English commander, so admired her courage, that, being come
into the castle with the English knights, and having made a
feast there, he assaulted the French by way of dessert, and beat
them off triumphantly. Then he and the knights came back
to the castle with great joy ; and the Countess who had watched
them from a high tower, thanked them with all her heart, and
kissed them every one.
This noble lady distinguished herself afterwards in a sea-
fight with the French off Guernsey, when she was on her way to
England to ask for more troops. Her great spirit roused another
EDWARD THE TfflRD 187
lady, the wife of another French lord (whom the French King
very barbarously murdered), to distinguish herself scarcely less.
The time was fast coming, however, when Edward, Prince of
Wales, was to be the great star of this French and English war.
It was in the month of July, in the year one thousand three
hundred and forty-six, when the King embarked at Southampton
for France, with an army of about thirty thousand men in all,
attended by the Prince of Wales and by several of the chief
nobles. He landed at La Hogue in Normandy ; and, burning
and destroying as he went, according to custom, advanced up
the left bank of the River Seine, and fired the small towns even
close to Paris ; but, being watched from the right bank of the
river by the French King and all his army, it came to this at
last, that Edward found himself, on Saturday the twenty-sixth of
August, one thousand three hundred and forty-six, on a rising
ground behind the little French village of Crecy, face to face
with the French King's force. And, although the French King
had an enormous army — in number more than eight times his
— he there resolved to beat him or be beaten.
The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of Oxford and the
Earl of Warwick, led the first division of the English army ;
two other great Earls led the second ; and the King, the third.
When the morning dawned, the King received the sacrament,
and heard prayers, and then, mounted on horseback with a white
wand in his hand, rode from company to company, and rank to
rank, cheering and encouraging both officers and men. Then
the whole army breakfasted, each man sitting on the ground
where he had stood ; and then they remained quietly on the
ground with their weapons ready.
Up came the French King with all his great force. It was
dark and angry weather ; there was an eclipse of the sun ; there
was a thunder-storm, accompanied with tremendous rain ; the
frightened birds flew screaming above the soldiers' heads. A
certain captain in the French army advised the French King,
who was by no means cheerful, not to begin the battle until the
morrow. The King, taking this advice, gave the word to halt.
But, those behind not understanding it, or desiring to be fore-
most with the rest, came pressing on. The roads for a great
distance were covered with this immense army, and with the
1 88 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Genoese Cross-bowmen
common people from the
villages, who were flourish-
ing their rude weapons,
and making a great noise.
Owing to these circum-
stances, the French army
advanced in the greatest
confusion ; every French
lord doing what he liked
with his own men, and
putting out the men of
every other French lord.
Now, their King relied
strongly upon a great body
of cross - bowmen from
Genoa; and these he
ordered to the front to
begin the battle, on finding
that he could not stop it.
They shouted once, they
shouted twice, they shouted
three times, to alarm the
English archers; but, the
English archers would have
heard them shout three
thousand times and would
have never moved. At last
the cross - bowmen went
forward a little, and began
to discharge their bolts ;
upon which, the English let
flysuchahailof arrows, that
the Genoese speedily made
ofi" — for their cross-bows,
besides being heavy to
carry, required to be wound
up with a handle, and con-
sequently took time to re-
load ; the English, on the
EDWARD THE THIRD 189
other hand, could discharge their arrows almost as fast as the
arrows could fly.
When the French King saw the Genoese turning, he cried
out to his men to kill those scoundrels, who were doing harm
instead of service. This increased the confusion. Meanwhile
the English archers, continuing to shoot as fast as ever, shot
down great numbers of the French soldiers and knights ; whom
certain sly Cornish-men and Welshmen, from the English army,
creeping along the ground, despatched with great knives.
The Prince and his division were at this time so hard-pressed,
that the Earl of Warwick sent a message to the King, who was
overlooking the battle from a windmill, beseeching him to send
more aid.
" Is my son killed ? " said the King.
" No, sire, please God," returned the messenger.
" Is he wounded ? " said the King.
" No, sire."
" Is he thrown to the ground ? " said the King.
" No, sire, not so ; but, he is very hard-pressed."
" Then," said the King, " go back to those who sent you, and
tell them I shall send no aid ; because I set my heart upon my
son proving himself this day a brave knight, and because I am re-
solved, please God, that the honour of a great victory shall be his ! "
These bold words, being reported to the Prince and his
division, so raised their spirits, that they fought better than
ever. The King of France charged gallantly with his men
many times ; but it was of no use. Night closing in, his horse
was killed under him by an English arrow, and the knights and
nobles who had clustered thick about him early in the day, were
now completely scattered. At last, some of his few remaining
followers led him off the field by force, since he would not retire
of himself, and they journeyed away to Amiens. The victorious
English, lighting their watch-fires, made merry on the field, and
the King, riding to meet his gallant son, took him in his arms,
kissed him, and told him that he had acted nobly, and proved
himself worthy of the day and of the crown. While it was yet
night. King Edward was hardly aware of the great victory he
had gained ; but, next day, it was discovered that eleven princes,
twelve hundred knights, and thirty thousand common men, lay
I90 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
dead upon the French side. Among these was the King of
Bohemia, an old blind man ; who, having been told that his son
was wounded in the battle, and that no force could stand against
the Black Prince, called to him two knights, put himself on
horseback between them, fastened the three bridles together,
and dashed in among the English, where he was presently slain.
He bore as his crest three white ostrich feathers, with the motto
Ich dien, signifying in English " I serve." This crest and motto
were taken by the Prince of Wales in remembrance of that famous
day, and have been borne by the Prince of Wales ever since.
Five days after this great battle, the King laid siege to Calais.
This siege — ever afterwards memorable — lasted nearly a year.
In order to starve the inhabitants out. King Edward built so
many wooden houses for the lodgings of his troops, that it is
said their quarters looked like a second Calais suddenly sprung
up around the first. Early in the siege, the governor of the
town drove out what he called the useless mouths, to the
number of seventeen hundred persons, men and women, young
and old. King Edward allowed them to pass through his lines,
and even fed them, and dismissed them with money ; but, later
in the siege, he was not so merciful — five hundred more, who
were afterwards driven out, dying of starvation and misery.
The garrison were so hard-pressed at last, that they sent a
letter to King Philip, telling him that they had eaten all the
horses, all the dogs, and all the rats and mice, that could be
found in the place ; and, that if he did not relieve them, they
must either surrender to the English, or eat one another. Philip
made one effort to give them relief; but they were so hemmed
in by the English power, that he could not succeed, and was fain
to leave the place. Upon this they hoisted the English flag,
and surrendered to King Edward. " Tell your general," said
he to the humble messengers who came out of the town, " that
I require to have sent here, six of the most distinguished
citizens, bare-legged, and in their shirts, with ropes about their
necks ; and let those six men bring with them the keys of the
castle and the town."
When the Governor of Calais related this to the people in
the Market-place, there was great weeping and distress ; in the
midst of which, one worthy citizen, named Eustace de Saint
EDWARD THE THIRD
191
THE SIX BURGESSES OF CALAIS
Pierre, rose up and said, that if the six men required were not
sacrificed, the whole population would be ; therefore, he offered
himself as the first. Encouraged by this bright example, five
other worthy citizens rose up one after another, and offered
themselves to save the rest. The Governor, who was too badly
wounded to be able to walk, mounted a poor old horse that had
not been eaten, and conducted these good men to the gate,
while all the people cried and mourned.
Edward received them wrathfully, and ordered the heads of
the whole six to be struck off. Sir Walter Manning pleaded
for them, but in vain. However, the good Queen fell upon her
knees, and besought the King to give them up to her. The
King replied, " I wish you had been somewhere else ; but I
cannot refuse you." So she had them properly dressed, made
a feast for them, and sent them back with a handsome present,
to the great rejoicing of the whole camp. I hope the people
of Calais loved the daughter to whom she gave birth soon after-
wards, for her gentle mother's sake.
192 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Now came that terrible disease, the Plague, into Europe,
hurrying from the heart of China ; and killed the wretched
people — especially the poor — in such enormous numbers, that
one-half of the inhabitants of England are related to have died
of it. It killed the cattle, in great numbers, too ; and so few
working men remained alive, that there were not enough left to
till the ground.
After eight years of differing and quarrelling, the Prince of
Wales again invaded France with an army of sixty thousand
men. He went through the south of the country, burning and
plundering wheresoever he went; while his father, who had still
the Scottish war upon his hands, did the like in Scotland, but
was harassed and worried in his retreat from that country by
the Scottish men, who repaid his cruelties with interest.
The French King, Philip, was now dead, and was succeeded
by his son John. The Black Prince, called by that name from
the colour of the armour he wore to set off his fair complexion,
continuing to burn and destroy in France, roused John into
determined opposition ; and so cruel had the Black Prince
been in his campaign, and so severely had the French peasants
suffered, that he could not find one who, for love, or money,
or the fear of death, would tell him what the French King was
doing, or where he was. Thus it happened that he came upon
the French King's forces, all of a sudden, near the town of
Poitiers, and found that the whole neighbouring country was
occupied by a vast French army. " God help us ! " said the
Black Prince, " we must make the best of it."
So, on a Sunday morning, the eighteenth of September, the
Prince — whose army was now reduced to ten thousand men in
all — prepared to give battle to the French King, who had sixty
thousand horse alone. While he was so engaged, there came
riding from the French camp, a Cardinal, who had persuaded
John to let him offer terms, and try to save the shedding of
Christian blood. "Save my honour," said the Prince to this
good priest, " and save the honour of my army, and I will make
any reasonable terms." He offered to give up all the towns,
castles, and prisoners, he had taken, and to swear to make no
war in France for seven years ; but, as John would hear of
nothing but his surrender, with a hundred of his chief knights,
EDWARD THE THIRD 193
the treaty was broken off, and the Prince said quietly — " God
defend the right ; we shall fight to-morrow."
Therefore, on the Monday morning, at break of day, the two
armies prepared for battle. The English were posted in a strong
place, which could only be approached by one narrow lane, skirted
by hedges on both sides. The French attacked them by this
lane ; but were so galled and slain by English arrows from
behind the hedges, that they were forced to retreat. Then
went six hundred English bowmen round about, and, coming
upon the rear of the French army, rained arrows on them thick
and fast. The French knights, thrown into confusion, quitted
their banners and dispersed in all directions. Said Sir John
Chandos to the Prince, " Ride forward, noble Prince, and the day
is yours. The King of France is so valiant a gentleman, that
I know he will never fly, and may be taken prisoner." Said
the Prince to this, " Advance, English banners, in the name of
God and St George ! " and on they pressed until they came up
with the French King, fighting fiercely with his battle-axe, and,
when all his nobles had forsaken him, attended faithfully to the
last by his youngest son Philip, only sixteen years of age.
Father and son fought well, and the King had already two
wounds in his face, and had been beaten down, when he at last
delivered himself to a banished French knight, and gave him
his right-hand glove in token that he had done so.
The Black Prince was generous as well as brave, and he
invited his royal prisoner to supper in his tent, and waited upon
him at table, and, when they afterwards rode into London in
a gorgeous procession, mounted the French King on a fine
cream-coloured horse, and rode at his side on a little pony.
This was all very kind, but I think it was, perhaps, a little
theatrical too, and has been made more meritorious than it
deserved to be ; especially as I am inclined to think that the
greatest kindness to the King of France would have been not
to have shown him to the pec(^ple at all. However, it must be
said, for these acts of politeness, that, in course of time, they
did much to soften the horrors of war and the passions of con-
querors. It was a long, long time before the common soldiers
began to have the benefit of such courtly deeds ; but they did
at last ; and thus it is possible that a poor soldier who asked
N
194 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
for quarter at the battle of Waterloo, or any other such great fight,
may have owed his life indirectly to Edward the Black Prince.
At this time there stood in the Strand, in London, a palace
called the Savoy, which was given up to the captive King of
France and his son for their residence. As the King of
Scotland had now been King Edward's captive for eleven years
too, his success was, at this time, tolerably complete. The
Scottish business was settled by the prisoner being released
under the title of Sir David, King of Scotland, and by his engag-
ing to pay a large ransom. The state of France encouraged
England to propose harder terms to that country, where the
people rose against the unspeakable cruelty and barbarity of its
nobles ; where the nobles rose in turn against the people ; where
the most frightful outrages were committed on all sides; and
where the insurrection of the peasants, called the insurrection of
the Jacquerie, from Jacques, a common Christian name among
the country people of France, awakened terrors and hatreds that
have scarcely yet passed away. A treaty called the Great
Peace, was at last signed, under which King Edward agreed to
give up the greater part of his conquests, and King John to pay,
within six years, a ransom of three million crowns of gold. He
was so beset by his own nobles and courtiers for having yielded
to these conditions — though they could help him to no better —
that he came back of his own will to his old palace-prison of
the Savoy, and there died.
There was a Sovereign of Castile at that time, called
Pedro the Cruel, who deserved the name remarkably well :
having committed, among other cruelties, a variety of murders.
This amiable monarch being driven from his throne for his
crimes, went to the province of Bordeaux, where the Black
Prince — now married to his cousin JOAN, a pretty widow — was
residing, and besought his help. The Prince, who took to him
much more kindly than a prince of such fame ought to have
taken to such a ruffian, readily listened to his fair promises, and,
agreeing to help him, sent secret orders to some troublesome
disbanded soldiers of his and his father's, who called themselves
the Free Companions, and who had been a pest to the French
people, for some time, to aid this Pedro. The Prince, himself,
going into Spain to head the army of relief, soon set Pedro on
EDWARD THE THIRD
195
his throne again — where he no sooner found himself, than, of
course, he behaved like the villain he was, broke his word
without the least shame, and abandoned all the promises he had
made to the Black Prince.
Now, it had cost the Prince a good deal of money to pay
soldiers to support this murderous King ; and finding himself,
when he came back disgusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad
health, but deeply in debt, he began to tax his French subjects
to pay his creditors. They appealed to the French King,
Charles ; war again broke out ; and the French town of
Limoges, which the Prince had greatly benefited, went over to
the French King. Upon this he ravaged the province of which
it was the capital ; burnt, and plundered, and killed, in the old
sickening way ; and refused mercy to the prisoners, men, women,
and children, taken in the offending town, though he was so ill
and so much in need of pity himself from Heaven, that he was
carried in a litter. He lived to come home and make himself
popular with the people and Parliament, and he died on
Trinity Sunday, the eighth of June, one thousand three hundred
and seventy-six, at forty-six years old.
The whole nation mourned for him as one of the most
renowned and beloved princes it had ever had ; and he was
buried with great lamentations in Canterbury Cathedral. Near
to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, his monument, with his
figure, carved in stone, and represented in the old black armour,
lying on its back, may be seen at this day, with an ancient coat
of mail, a helmet, and a pair of gauntlets hanging from a beam
above it, which most people like to believe were once worn by
the Black Prince.
King Edward did not outlive his renowned son, long. He
was old, and one Alice Perrers, a beautiful lady, had contrived
to make him so fond of her in his old age, that he could refuse
her nothing, and made himself ridiculous. She little deserved
his love, or-^what I dare say she valued a great deal more
— the jewels of the late Queen, which he gave her among
other rich presents. She took the very ring from his finger on
the morning of the day when he died, and left him to be
pillaged by his faithless servants. Only one good priest was
true to him, and attended him to the last.
196 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Besides being famous for the great victories I have related,
the reign of King Edward the Third was rendered memorable
in better ways, by the growth of architecture and the erection
of Windsor Castle. In better ways still, by the rising up of
WiCKLIFFE, originally a poor parish priest; who devoted
himself to exposing, with wonderful power and success, the
ambition and corruption of the Pope, and of the whole church
of which he was the head.
Some of those Flemings were induced to come to England
in this reign too, and to settle in Norfolk, where they made
better woollen cloths than the English had ever had before.
The Order of the Garter (a very fine thing in its way, but
hardly so important as good clothes for. the nation) also dates
from this period. The King is said to have picked up a lady's
garter at a ball, and to have said, Honi soit qui maly pense — in
English, " Evil be to him who evil thinks of it." The courtiers
were usually glad to imitate what the King said or did, and
hence from a slight incident the Order of the Garter was
instituted, and became a great dignity. So the story goes.
CHAPTER XIX
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND
Richard, son of the Black Prince, a boy eleven years of age,
succeeded to the Crown under the title of King Richard the
Second. The whole English nation were ready to admire him
for the sake of his brave father. As to the lords and ladies
about the Court, they declared him to be the most beautiful,
the wisest, and the best — even of princes — whom the lords
and ladies about the Court, generally declare to be the most
beautiful, the wisest, and the best of mankind. To flatter a
poor boy in this base manner was not a very likely way to
develop whatever good was in him ; and it brought him to
anything but a good or happy end.
The Duke of Lancaster, the young King's uncle — commonly
called John of Gaunt, from having been born at Ghent, which
the common people so pronounced — was supposed to have some
RICHARD THE SECOND
197
thoughts of the throne himself ; but, as he was not popular, and
the memory of the Black Prince was, he submitted to his nephew.
The war with France being still unsettled, the Government
of England wanted money to provide for the expenses that
might arise out of it; accordingly a certain tax, called the
Poll-tax, which had originated in the last reign, was ordered
to be levied on the people. This was a tax on every person
in the kingdom, male and female, above the age of fourteen,
of three groats (or three fourpenny pieces) a year ; clergymen
were charged more, and only beggars were exempt.
I have no need to repeat that the common people of England
had long been suffering under great oppression. They were still
the mere slaves of the lords of the land on which they lived, and
were on most occasions harshly and unjustly treated. But, they
had begun by this time to think very seriously of not bearing
quite so much ; and, probably, were emboldened by that French
insurrection I mentioned in the last chapter.
The people of Essex rose against the Poll-tax, and being
severely handled by the government officers, killed some of them.
At this very time one of the tax-collecters, going his rounds
198 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
WAT TYLER AND THE TAX COLLECTOR
from house to house, at Dartford in Kent, came to the cottage
of one Wat, a tiler by trade, and claimed the tax upon his
daughter. Her mother, who was at home, declared that she
was under the age of fourteen ; upon that, the collector (as
other collectors had already done in different parts of England)
behaved in a savage way, and brutally insulted Wat Tyler's
daughter. The daughter screamed, the mother screamed. Wat
the Tiler, who was at work not far off, ran to the spot, and did
what any honest father under such provocation might have done
— struck the collector dead at a blow.
Instantly the people of that town uprose as one man. They
made Wat Tyler their leader ; they joined with the people of
Essex, who were in arms under a priest called Jack Straw ;
they took out of prison another priest named John Ball ; and
gathering in numbers as they went along, advanced, in a great
confused army of poor men, to Blackheath. It is said that
they wanted to abolish all property, and to declare all men
equal. I do not think this very likely ; because they stopped
RICHARD THE SECOND 199
the travellers on the roads and made them swear to be true to
King Richard and the people. Nor were they at all disposed
to injure those who had done them no harm, merely because
they were of high station ; for, the King's mother, who had to
pass through their camp at Blackheath, on her way to her
young son, lying for safety in the Tower of London, had merely
to kiss a few dirty-faced rough-bearded men who were noisily
fond of royalty, and so got away in perfect safety. Next day
the whole mass marched on to London Bridge.
There was a drawbridge in the middle, which WILLIAM
Walworth the Mayor caused to be raised to prevent their
coming into the city ; but they soon terrified the citizens into
lowering it again, and spread themselves, with great uproar,
over the streets. They broke open the prisons ; they burned
the papers in Lambeth Palace ; they destroyed the DuKE OF
Lancaster's Palace, the Savoy, in the Strand, said to be the
most beautiful and splendid in England ; they set fire to the
books and documents in the Temple ; and made a great riot.
Many of these outrages were committed in drunkenness ; since
those citizens, who had well-filled cellars, were only too glad
to throw them open to save the rest of their property ; but even
the drunken rioters were very careful to steal nothing. They
were so angry with one man, who was seen to take a silver
cup at the Savoy Palace, and put it in his breast, that they
drowned him in the river, cup and all.
The young King had been taken out to treat with them
before they committed these excesses ; but, he and the people
about him were so frightened by the riotous shouts, that they
got back to the Tower in the best way they could. This made
the insurgents bolder; so they went on rioting away, striking
off the heads of those who did not, at a moment's notice, declare
for King Richard and the people ; and killing as many of the
unpopular persons whom they supposed to be their enemies as
they could by any means lay hold of In this manner they
passed one very violent day, and then proclamation was made
that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and grant their
requests.
The rioters went to Mile-end, to the number of sixty
thousand, and the King met them there, and to the King the
200 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
rioters peaceably proposed four conditions. First, that neither
they, nor their children, nor any coming after them, should be
made slaves any more. Secondly, that the rent of land should
be fixed at a certain price in money, instead of being paid in
service. Thirdly, that they should have liberty to buy and sell
in all markets and public places, like other free men. Fourthly,
that they should be pardoned for past offences. Heaven knows,
there was nothing very unreasonable in these proposals ! The
young King deceitfully pretended to think so, and kept thirty
clerks up, all night, writing out a charter accordingly.
Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this. He wanted
the entire abolition of the forest laws. He was not at Mile-end
with the rest, but, while that meeting was being held, broke
into the Tower of London and slew the archbishop and the
treasurer, for whose heads the people had cried out loudly the
day before. He and his men even thrust their swords into
the bed of the Princess of Wales while the Princess was in
it, to make certain that none of their enemies were concealed
there.
So, Wat and his men still continued armed, and rode about
the city. Next morning, the King with a small train of some
sixty gentlemen — among whom was WALWORTH the Mayor
— rode into Smithfield, and saw Wat and his people at a little
distance. Says Wat to his men, " There is the King. I will
go speak with him, and tell him what we want."
Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began to talk. "King,"
says Wat, " dost thou see all my men there?"
" Ah," says the King. " Why ? "
"Because," says Wat, "they are all at my command, and
have sworn to do whatever I bid them."
Some declared afterwards that as Wat said this, he laid
his hand on the King's bridle. Others declared that he was
seen to play with his own dagger. I think, myself, that he
just spoke to the King like a rough, angry man as he was,
and did nothing more. At any rate he was expecting no
attack, and preparing for no resistance, when Walworth the
Mayor did the not very valiant deed of drawing a short sword
and stabbing him in the throat. He dropped from his horse,
and one of the King's people speedily finished him. So fell
RICHARD THE SECOND 201
Wat Tyler. Fawners and flatterers made a mighty triumph of
it, and set up a cry which will occasionally find an echo to
this day. But Wat was a hard-working man, who had suffered
much, and had been foully outraged ; and it is probable that
he was a man of a much higher nature and a much braver spirit
than any of the parasites who exulted then, or have exulted
since, over his defeat.
Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bows
to avenge his fall. If the young King had not had presence
of mind at that dangerous moment, both he and the Mayor to
boot, might have followed Tyler pretty fast. But the King,
riding up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler was a traitor, and
that he would be their leader. They were so taken by surprise,
that they set up a great shouting, and followed the boy until
he was met at Islington by a large body of soldiers.
The end of this rising was the then usual end. As soon
as the King found himself safe, he unsaid all he had said, and
undid all he had done ; some fifteen hundred of the rioters
were tried (mostly in Essex) with great rigour, and executed
with great cruelty. Many of them were hanged on gibbets,
and left there as a terror to the country people ; and, because
their miserable friends took some of the bodies down to bury,
the King ordered the rest to be chained up — which was the
beginning of the barbarous custom of hanging in chains. The
King's falsehood in this business makes such a pitiful figure,
that I think Wat Tyler appears in history as beyond comparison
the truer and more respectable man of the two.
Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married Anne
of Bohemia, an excellent princess, who was called " the good
Queen Anne." She deserved a better husband ; for the King
had been fawned and flattered into a treacherous, wasteful,
dissolute, bad young man.
There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not
enough !), and their quarrels involved Europe in a great deal
of trouble. Scotland was still troublesome too ; and at home
there was much jealousy and distrust, and plotting and counter-
plotting, because the King feared the ambition of his relations,
and particularly of his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, and the
duke had his party against the King, and the King had his
202 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
party against the duke. Nor were these home troubles lessened
when the duke went to Castile to urge his claim to the crown
of that kingdom ; for then the Duke of Gloucester, another of
Richard's uncles, opposed him, and influenced the Parliament
to demand the dismissal of the King's favourite ministers. The
King said in reply, that he would not for such men dismiss
the meanest servant in his kitchen. But, it had begun to
signify little what a King said when a Parliament was deter-
mined ; so Richard was at last obliged to give way, and to
agree to another Government of the kingdom, under a com-
mission of fourteen nobles, for a year. His uncle of Gloucester
was at the head of this commission, and, in fact, appointed
everybody composing it.
Having done all this, the King declared as soon as he saw
an opportunity that he had never meant to do it, and that it
was all illegal; and he got the judges secretly to sign a declara-
tion to that effect. The secret oozed out directly, and was
carried to the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of Gloucester,
at the head of forty thousand men, met the King on his
entering into London to enforce his authority; the King was
helpless against him ; his favourites and ministers were im-
peached and were mercilessly executed. Among them were
two men whom the people regarded with very different feelings;
one, Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was hated for having
made what was called "the bloody circuit" to try the rioters;
the other, Sir Simon Burley, an honourable knight, who had
been the dear friend of the Black Prince, and the governor and
guardian of the King. For this gentleman's life the good
Queen even begged of Gloucester on her knees ; but Gloucester
(with or without reason) feared and hated him, and replied,
that if she valued her husband's crown, she had better beg
no more. All this was done under what was called by some
the wonderful — and by others, with better reason, the merciless
— Parliament.
But Gloucester's power was not to last for ever. He held
it for only a year longer ; in which year the famous battle of
Otterbourne, sung in the old ballad of Chevy Chase, was
fought. When the year was out, the King, turning suddenly
to Gloucester, in the midst of a great council said, " Uncle, how
RICHARD THE SECOND 203
old am I?" "Your highness," returned the Duke, "is in your
twenty-second year." " Am I so much ? " said the King, " then
I will manage my own affairs ! I am much obliged to you,
'"y good lords, for your past services, but I need them no
more." He followed this up, by appointing a new Chancellor
and a new Treasurer, and announced to the people that he had
resumed the Government. He held it for eight years without
opposition. Through all that time, he kept his determination
to revenge himself some day upon his uncle Gloucester, in his
own breast.
At last the good Queen died, and then the King, desiring
to take a second wife, proposed to his council that he should
marry Isabella, of France, the daughter of Charles the Sixth :
who, the French courtiers said (as the English courtiers had
said of Richard), was a marvel of beauty and wit, and quite a
phenomenon — of seven years old. The council were divided
about this marriage, but it took place. It secured peace
between England and France for a quarter of a century ; but
it was strongly opposed to the prejudices of the English people.
The Duke of Gloucester, who was anxious to take the occasion
of making himself popular, declaimed against it loudly, and
this at length decided the King to execute the vengeance he
had been nursing so long.
He went with a gay company to the Duke of Gloucester's
house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex, where the Duke, suspecting
nothing, came out into the court-yard to receive his royal
visitor. While the King conversed in a friendly manner with
the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized, hurried away, shipped
for Calais, and lodged in the castle there. His friends, the
Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were taken in the same
treacherous manner, and confined to their castles. A few
days after, at Nottingham, they were impeached of high
treason. The Earl of Arundel was condemned and beheaded,
and the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ was
sent by a messenger to the Governor of Calais, requiring him
to send the Duke of Gloucester over to be tried. In three
days he returned an answer that he could not do that, because
the Duke of Gloucester had died in prison. The Duke was
declared a traitor, his property was confiscated to the King,
204 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
a real or pretended confession he had made in prison to one
of the Justices of the Common Pleas was produced against
him, and there was an end of the matter. How the unfortunate
duke died, very few cared to know. Whether he really died
naturally; whether he killed himself; whether, by the King's
order, he was strangled, or smothered between two beds (as
a serving-man of the Governor's named Hall, did afterwards
declare), cannot be discovered. There is not much doubt
that he was killed, somehow or other, by his nephew's orders.
Among the most active nobles in these proceedings were the
King's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the King had made
Duke of Hereford to smooth down the old family quarrels,
and some others : who had in the family-plotting times done
just such acts themselves as they now condemned in the duke.
They seem to have been a corrupt set of men ; but such men
were easily found about the court in such days.
The people murmured at all this, and were still very sore
about the French marriage. The nobles saw how little the
King cared for law, and how crafty he was, and began to be
somewhat afraid of themselves. The King's life was a life
of continued feasting and excess ; his retinue, down to the
meanest servants, were dressed in the most costly manner,
and caroused at his tables, it is related, to the number of ten
thousand persons every day. He himself, surrounded by a
body of ten thousand archers, and enriched by a duty on wool
which the Commons had granted him for life, saw no danger
of ever being otherwise than powerful and absolute, and was
as fierce and haughty as a King could be.
He had two of his old enemies left, in the persons of the
Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no more than
the others, he tampered with the Duke of Hereford until he
got him to declare before the Council that the Duke of Norfolk
had lately held some treasonable talk with him, as he was
riding near Brentford ; and that he had told him, among other
things, that he could not believe the King's oath — which nobody
could, I should think. For this treachery he obtained a pardon,
and the Duke of Norfolk was summoned to appear and defend
himself. As he denied the charge and said his accuser was
a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, according to the manner
RICHARD THE SECOND 205
of those times, were held in custody, and the truth was ordered
to be decided by wager of battle at Coventry. This wager of
battle meant that whosoever won the combat was to be con-
sidered in the right ; which nonsense meant in effect, that no
strong man could ever be wrong. A great holiday was made ;
a great crowd assembled, with much parade and show ; and the
two combatants were about to rush at each other with their
lances, when the King, sitting in a pavilion to see fair, threw
down the truncheon he carried in his hand, and forbade the
battle. The Duke of Hereford was to be banished for ten
years, and the Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for life.
So said the King. The Duke of Hereford went to France,
and went no farther. The Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land, and afterwards died at Venice of a broken
heart.
Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went on in his career.
The Duke of Lancaster, who was the father of the Duke of
Hereford, died soon after the departure of his son ; and, the
King, although he had solemnly granted to that son leave to
inherit his father's property, if it should come to him during
his banishment, immediately seized it all, like a robber. The
judges were so afraid of him, that they disgraced themselves
by declaring this theft to be just and lawful. His avarice knew
no bounds. He outlawed seventeen counties at once, on a
frivolous pretence, merely to raise money by way of fines for
misconduct. In short, he did as many dishonest things as he
could ; and cared so little for the discontent of his subjects —
though even the spaniel favourites began to whisper to him that
there was such a thing as discontent afloat — that he took that
time, of all others, for leaving England and making an expedi-
tion against the Irish.
He was scarcely gone, leaving the DUKE OF YORK Regent
in his absence, when his cousin, Henry of Hereford, came over
from France, to claim the rights of which he had been so
monstrously deprived. He was immediately joined by the
two great Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland ; and
his uncle, the Regent, finding the King's cause unpopular, and
the disinclination of the army to act against Henry, very strong,
withdrew with the royal forces towards Bristol. Henry, at the
2o6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
head of an army, came from Yorkshire (where he had landed)
to London and followed him. They joined their forces— how
they brought that about, is not distinctly understood — and
proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen had taken
the young Queen. The castle surrendering, they presently
put those three noblemen to death. The Regent then remained
there, and Henry went on to Chester.
All this time, the boisterous weather had prevented the
King from receiving intelligence of what had occurred. At
length it was conveyed to him in Ireland, and he sent over the
Earl of Salisbury, who, landing at Conway, rallied the
Welshmen, and waited for the King a whole fortnight ; at the
end of that time the Welshmen, who were perhaps not very
warm for him in the beginning, quite cooled down, and went
home. When the King did land on the coast at last, he came
with a pretty good power, but his men cared nothing for him,
and quickly deserted. Supposing the Welshmen to be still
at Conway, he disguised himself as a priest, and made for that
place in company with his two brothers and some few of their
adherents. But, there were no Welshm.en left— only Salisbury
and a hundred soldiers. In this distress, the King's two
brothers, Exeter and Surrey, offered to go to Henry to learn
what his intentions were. Surrey, who was true to Richard,
was put into prison. Exeter, who was false, took the royal
badge, which was a hart, off his shield, and assumed the rose,
the badge of Henry. After this, it was pretty plain to the King
what Henry's intentions were, without sending any more
messengers to ask.
The fallen King, thus deserted — hemmed in on all sides, and
pressed with hunger — rode here and rode there, and went ,to
this castle, and went to that castle, endeavouring to obtain
some provisions, but could find none. He rode wretchedly
back to Conway, and there surrendered himself to the Earl of
Northumberland, who came from Henry, in reality to take him
prisoner, but in appearance to offer terms ; and whose men
were hidden not far off. By this earl he was conducted to the
castle of Flint, where his cousin, Henry, met him, and dropped
on his knee as if he were still respectful to his sovereign.
" Fair cousin of Lancaster," said the King, " you are very
RICHARD THE SECOND 207
welcome" (very welcome, no doubt ; but he would have been
more so, in chains or without a head).
" My lord," replied Henry, " I am come a little before my
time ; but, with your good pleasure, I will show you the reason.
Your people complain with some bitternes-s, that you have
ruled them rigorously for two-and-twenty years. Now, if it
please God, I will help you to govern them better in future.
" Fair cousin," replied the abject King, " since it pleaseth
you, it pleaseth me mightily."
After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King was stuck on
a wretched horse, and carried prisoner to Chester, where he
was made to issue a proclamation, calling a Parliament. From
Chester he was taken on towards London. At Lichfield he
tried to escape by getting out of a window and letting himself
down into a garden ; it was all in vain, however, and he was
carried on and shut up in the Tower, where no one pitied him,
and where the whole people, whose patience he had quite tired
out, reproached him without mercy. Before he got there, it is
related, that his very dog left him and departed from his side
to lick the hand of Henry.
The day before the Parliament met, a deputation went to
this wrecked King, and told him that he had promised the Earl of
Northumberland at Conway Castle to resign the crown. He
said he was quite ready to do it, and signed a paper in which
he renounced his authority and absolved his people from their
allegiance to him. He had so little spirit left that he gave his
royal ring to his triumphant cousin Henry with his own hand,
and said, that if he could have had leave to appoint a successor,
that same Henry was the man of all others whom he would
have named. Next day, the Parliament assembled in West-
minster Hall, where Henry sat at the side of the throne, which
was empty and covered with a cloth of gold. The paper just
signed by the King was read to the multitude amid shouts of
joy, which were echoed through all the streets ; when some
of the noise had died away, the King was formally deposed.
Then Henry arose, and, making the sign of the cross on his
forehead and breast, challenged the realm of England as his
right ; the archbishops of Canterbury and York seated him on
the throne.
2o8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed
throughout all the streets. No one remembered, now, that Richard
the Second had ever been the most beautiful, the wisest, and
the best of princes ; and he now made living (to my thinking) a far
more sorry spectacle in the Tower of London, than Wat Tyler
had made, lying dead, among the hoofs of the royal horses in
Smithfield.
The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the King and
Royal Family, could make no chains in which the King could
hang the people's recollection of him ; so the Poll-tax was never
collected.
CHAPTER XX
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED
BOLINGBROKE
During the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe against the
pride and cunning of the Pope and all his men, had made a
great noise in England. Whether the new King wished to be
in favour with the priests, or whether he hoped, by pretending
to be very religious, to cheat Heaven itself into the belief that
he was not an usurper, I don't know. Both suppositions are
likely enough. It is certain that he began his reign by making
a strong show against the followers of Wickliffe, who were
called Lollards, or heretics — although his father, John of Gaunt,
had been of that way of thinking, as he himself had been more
than suspected of being. It is no less certain that he first
established in England the detestable and atrocious custom,
brought from abroad, of burning those people as a punishment
for their opinions. It was the importation into England of one
of the practices of what was called the Holy Inquisition : which
was the most unholy and the most infamous tribunal that ever
disgraced mankind, and made men more like demons than
followers of Our Saviour.
No real right to the crown, as you know, was in this King.
Edward Mortimer, the young Earl of March — who was only
eight or nine years old, and who was descended from the Duke
of Clarence, the elder brother of Henry's father — was, by succes-
HENRY THE FOURTH
209
sion, the real heir to the throne. However, the King got his
son declared Prince of Wales ; and, obtaining possession of the
young Earl of March and his little brother, kept them in con-
finement (but not severely) in Windsor Castle. He then required
the Parliament to decide what was to be done with the deposed
King, who was quiet enough, and who only said that he hoped
his cousin Henry would be "a good lord" to him. The
Parliament replied that they would recommend his being kept
in some secret place where the people could not resort, and
where his friends should not be admitted to see him. Henry
accordingly passed this sentence upon him, and it now began
to be pretty clear to the nation that Richard the Second would
not live very long.
It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an unprincipled one, and
the Lords quarrelled so violently among themselves as to which
of them had been loyal and which disloyal, and which consistent
and which inconsistent, that forty gauntlets are said to have
been thrown upon the floor at one time as challenges to as
many battles : the truth being that they were all false and base
together, and had been, at one time with the old King, and at
O
2IO A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
another time with the new one, and seldom true for any length
of time to any one. They soon began to plot again. A con-
spiracy was formed to invite the King to a tournament at
Oxford, and then to take him by surprise and kill him. This
murderous enterprise, which was agreed upon at secret meetings
in the house of the Abbot of Westminster, was betrayed by the
Earl of Rutland — one of the conspirators. The King, instead
of going to the tournament or staying at Windsor (where the
conspirators suddenly went, on finding themselves discovered,
with the hope of seizing him), retired to London, proclaimed
them all traitors, and advanced upon them with a great force.
They retired into the west of England, proclaiming Richard
King; but, the people rose against them, and they were all
slain. Their treason hastened the death of the deposed monarch.
Whether he was killed by hired assassins, or whether he was
starved to death, or whether he refused food on hearing of his
brothers being killed (who were in that plot), is very doubtful.
He met his death somehow ; and his body was publicly shown
at St Paul's Cathedral with only the lower part of the face un-
covered. I can scarcely doubt that he was killed by the King's
orders.
The French wife of the miserable Richard was now only ten
years old ; and, when her father, Charles of France, heard of her
misfortunes and of her lonely condition in England, he went mad :
as he had several times done before, during the last five or six
years. The French Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon took up
the poor girl's cause, without caring much about it, but on the
chance of getting something out of England. The people of
Bordeaux, who had a sort of superstitious attachment to the
memory of Richard, because he was born there, swore by the
Lord that he had been the best man in all his kingdom — which
was going rather far — and promised to do great things against
the English. Nevertheless, when they came to considei- that
they, and the whole people of France, were ruined by their own
nobles, and that the English rule was much the better of the
two, they cooled down again ; and the two dukes, although they
were very great men, could do nothing without them. Then
began negotiations between France and England for the sending
home to Paris of the poor little Queen with all her jewels and
HENRY THE FOURTH 211
her fortune of two hundred thousand francs in gold. The King
was quite willing to restore the young lady, and even the jewels ;
but he said he really could not part with the money. So, at last
she was safely deposited at Paris without her fortune, and then
the Duke of Burgundy (who was cousin to the French King)
began to quarrel with the Duke of Orleans (who was brother to
the French King) about the whole matter ; and those two dukes
made France even more wretched than ever.
As the idea of conquering Scotland was still popular at
home, the King marched to the river Tyne and demanded
homage of the King of that country. This being refused, he
advanced to Edinburgh, but did little there ; for, his army
being in want of provisions, and the Scotch being very careful
to hold him in check without giving battle, he was obliged to
retire. It is to his immortal honour that in this sally he burnt
no villages and slaughtered no people, but was particularly
careful that his army should be merciful and harmless. It was
a great example in those ruthless times.
A war among the border people of England and Scotland
went on for twelve months, and then the Earl of Northumberland,
the nobleman who had helped Henry to the crown, began to
rebel against him — probably because nothing that Henry could
do for him would satisfy his extravagant expectations. There
was a certain Welsh gentleman, named OWEN Glendower,
who had been a student in one of the Inns of Court, and had
afterwards been in the service of the late King, whose Welsh
property was taken from him by a powerful lord related to the
present King, who was his neighbour. Appealing for redress,
and getting none, he took up arms, was made an outlaw, and
declared himself sovereign of Wales. He pretended to be a
magician ; and not only were the Welsh people stupid enough
to believe him, but, even Henry believed him too ; for, making
three expeditions into Wales, and being three times driven back
by the wildness of the country, the bad weather, and the skill of
Glendower, he thought he was defeated by the Welshman's
magic arts. However, he took Lord Grey and Sir Edmund
Mortimer, prisoners, and allowed the relatives of Lord Grey to
ransom him, but would not extend such favour to Sir Edmund
Mortimer. Now, Henry Percy, called HOTSPUR, son of the
212 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FIELD OF THE BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY
Earl of Northumberland, who was married to Mortimer's sister,
is supposed to have taken offence at this ; and, therefore, in
conjunction with his father and some others, to have joined
Owen Glendower, and risen against Henry. It is by no means
clear that this was the real cause of the conspiracy ; but perhaps
it was made the pretext. It was formed, and was very power-
ful ; including SCROOP, Archbishop of York, and the Earl OF
Douglas, a powerful and brave Scottish nobleman. The King
was prompt and active, and the two armies met at Shrewsbury.
There were about fourteen thousand men in each. The old
Earl of Northumberland being sick, the rebel forces were led by
his son. The King wore plain armour to deceive the enemy ;
and four noblemen, with the same object, wore the royal arms.
The rebel charge was so furious, that every one of those gentle-
men was killed, the royal standard was beaten down, and the
young Prince of Wales was severely wounded in the face. But
he was one of the bravest and best soldiers that ever lived, and
he fought so well, and the King's troops were so encouraged by
HENRY THE FOURTH
213
JAMES I. (of SCOTLAND) IN PRISON
his bold example, that they rallied immediately, and cut the
enemy's forces all to pieces. Hotspur was killed by an arrow
in the brain, and the rout was so complete that the whole
rebellion was struck down by this one blow. The Earl of
Northumberland surrendered himself soon after hearing of the
death of his son, and received a pardon for all his offences.
There were some lingerings of rebellion yet : Owen Glen-
dower being retired to Wales, and a preposterous story being
spread among the ignorant people that King Richard was still
alive. How they could have believed such nonsense it is difficult
to imagine ; but they certainly did suppose that the Court fool
of the late King, who was something like him, was he, himself ;
so that it seemed as if, after giving so much trouble to the
country in his life, he was still to trouble it after his death.
This was not the worst. The young Earl of March and his
brother were stolen out of Windsor Castle. Being retaken, and
being found to have been spirited away by one Lady Spencer,
she accused her own brother, that Earl of Rutland who was in
the former conspiracy and was now Duke of York, of being in
214 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the plot. For this he was ruined in fortune, though not put to
death; and then another plot arose among the old Earl of
Northumberland, some other lords, and that same Scroop,
Archbishop of York, who was with the rebels before. These
conspirators caused a writing to be posted on the church doors,
accusing the King of a variety of crimes ; but, the King being
eager and vigilant to oppose them, they were all taken, and the
Archbishop was executed. This was the first time that a great
churchman had been slain by the law in England ; but the
King was resolved that it should be done, and done it was.
The next most remarkable event of this time was the seizure,
by Henry, of the heir to the Scottish throne — James, a boy of
nine years old. He had been put aboard-ship by his father, the
Scottish King Robert, to save him from the designs of his uncle,
when, on his way to France, he was accidentally taken by some
English cruisers. He remained a prisoner in England for
nineteen years, and became in his prison a student and a famous
poet.
With the exception of occasional troubles with the Welsh
and with the French, the rest of King Henry's reign was quiet
enough. But, the King was far from happy, and probably was
troubled in his conscience by knowing that he had usurped the
crown, and had occasioned the death of his miserable cousin.
The Prince of Wales, though brave and generous, is said to
have been wild and dissipated, and even to have drawn his
sword on GasCOIGNE, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench,
because he was firm in dealing impartially with one of his
dissolute companions.- Upon this the Chief Justice is said to
have ordered him immediately to prison ; the Prince of Wales
is said to have submitted with a good grace ; and the King is
said to have exclaimed, " Happy is the monarch who has so just
a judge, and a son so willing to obey the laws." This is all very
doubtful, and so is another story (of which Shakespeare has
made beautiful use), that the Prince once took the crown out
of his father's chamber as he was sleeping, and tried it on his
own head.
The King's health sank more and more, and he became
subject to violent eruptions on the face and to bad epileptic fits,
and his spirits sank every day. At last, as he was praying
HENRY THE FIFTH
215
before the shrine of St Edward at Westminster Abbey, he was
seized with a terrible fit, and was carried into the Abbot's
chamber, where he presently died. It had been foretold that he
would die at Jerusalem, which certainly is not, and never was,
Westminster. But, as the Abbot's room had long been called
the Jerusalem chamber, people said it was all the same thing,
and were quite satisfied with the prediction.
The King died on the 20th of March, 141 3, in the forty-
seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth of his reign.
He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. He had been twice
married, and had, by his first wife, a family of four sons and two
daughters. Considering his duplicity before he came to the
throne, his unjust seizure of it, and above all, his making that
monstrous law for the burning of what the priests called heretics,
he was a reasonably good king, as kings went.
CHAPTER XXI
england under henry the fifth
First Part
The Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous and honest
man. He set the young Earl of March free ; he restored their
estates and their honours to the P?rcy family, who had lost them
by their rebellion against his father ; he ordered the imbecile
and unfortunate Richard to be honourably buried among the
Kings of England ; and he dismissed all his wild companions,
with assurances that they should not want, if they would resolve
to be steady, faithful, and true.
It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions ;
and those of the Lollards were spreading every day. The
Lollards were represented by the priests — probably falsely for
the most part — to entertain treasonable designs against the new
King; and Henry, suffering himself to be worked upon by these
representations, sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the
Lord Cobham, to them, after trying in vain to convert him by
arguments. He was declared guilty, as the head of the sect,
2i6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
AT AGINCOURT
and sentenced to the flames ; but he escaped from the Tower
before the day of execution (postponed for fifty days by the
King himself), and summoned the Lollards to meet him near
London on a certain day. So the priests told the King, at
least. I doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyond such
as was got up by their agents. On the day appointed, instead
of five-and-twenty thousand men, under the command of Sir
John Oldcastle, in the meadows of St Giles, the King found
only eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There was, in
another place, an addle-headed brewer, who had gold trappings
to his horses, and a pair of gilt spurs in his breast — expecting
to be made a knight next day by Sir John, and so to gain the
right to wear them — but there was no Sir John, nor did anybody
give information respecting him, though the King offered great
rewards for such intelligence. Thirty of these unfortunate
Lollards were hanged and drawn immediately, and were then
burnt, gallows and all ; and the various prisons in and around
London were crammed full of others. Some of these unfortunate
men made various confessions of treasonable designs ; but, such
confessions were easily got, under torture and the fear of fire,
and are very little to be trusted. To finish the sad story of Sir
HENRY THE FIFTH 217
John Oldcastle at once, I may mention that he escaped into
Wales, and remained there safely, for four years. When dis-
covered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would have
been taken alive — so great was the old soldier's bravery — if a
miserable old woman had not come behind him and broken his
legs with a stool. He was carried to London in a horse-litter,
was fastened by an iron chain to a gibbet, and so roasted to
death.
To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few words,
I should tell you that the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of
Burgundy, commonly called "John without fear," had had a
grand reconciliation of their quarrel in the last reign, and had
appeared to be quite in a heavenly state of mind. Immediately
after which, on a Sunday, in the public streets of Paris, the
Duke of Orleans was murdered by a party of twenty men, set
on by the Duke of Burgundy — according to his own deliberate
confession. The widow of King Richard had been married in
France to the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans. The poor
mad King was quite powerless to help her, and the Duke of
Burgundy became the real master of France. Isabella dying,
her husband (Duke of Orleans since the death of his fathet)
married the daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who, being a
much abler man than his young son-in-law, headed his party ;
thence called after him Armagnacs. Thus, France was now in
this terrible condition, that it had in it the party of the King's
son, the Dauphin Louis ; the party of the Duke of Burgundy,
who was the father of the Dauphin's ill-used wife; and the
party of the Armagnacs ; all hating each other ; all fighting
together ; all composed of the most depraved nobles that the
earth has ever known ; and all tearing unhappy France to
pieces.
The late King had watched these dissensions from England,
sensible (like the French people) that no enemy of France could
injure her more than her own nobility. The present King now
advanced a claim to the French throne. His demand being, of
course, refused, he reduced his proposal to a certain large
amount of French territory, and to demanding the French
princess, Catherine, in marriage, with a fortune of two millions
of golden crowns. He was offered less territory and fewer
2i8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
crowns, and no princess ; but he called his ambassadors home
and prepared for war. Then, he proposed to take the princess
with one million of crowns. The French Court replied that he
should have the princess with two hundred thousand crowns
less ; he said this would not do (he had never seen the princess
in his life), and assembled his army at Southampton. There
was a short plot at home just at that time, for deposing him,
and making the Earl of March king ; but the conspirators were
all speedily condemned and executed, and the King embarked
for France.
It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will be
followed ; but, it is encouraging to know that a good example is
never thrown away. The King's first act on disembarking at
the mouth of the river Seine, three miles from Harfleur, was to
imitate his father, and to proclaim his solemn orders that the
lives and property of the peaceable inhabitants should be
respected on pain of death. It is agreed by French writers, to
his lasting renown, that even while his soldiers were suffering
the greatest distress from want of food, these commands were
rigidly obeyed.
With an army in all of thirty thousand men, he besieged the
town of Harfleur both by sea and land for five weeks ; at the
end of which time the town surrendered, and the inhabitants
were allowed to depart with only fivepence each, and a part of
their clothes. All the rest of their possessions was divided
amongst the English army. But, that army suffered so much,
in spite of its successes, from disease and privation, that it was
already reduced one half. Still, the King was determined not
to retire until he had struck a greater blow. Therefore, against
the advice of all his counsellors, he moved on with his little
force towards Calais. When he came up to the river Somme
he was unable to cross, in consequence of the ford being fortified ;
and, as the English moved up the left bank of the river looking
for a crossing, the French, who had broken all the bridges,
moved up the right bank, watching them, and waiting to attack
them when they should try to pass it. At last the English found
a crossing and got safely over. The French held a council of
war at Rouen, resolved to give the English battle, and sent
heralds to King Henry to know by which road he was going.
HENRY THE FIFTH 219
" By the road that will take me strait to Calais 1 " said the King,
and sent them away with a present of a hundred crowns.
The English moved on, until they beheld the French, and
then the King gave orders to form in line of battle. The French
not coming on, the army broke up after remaining in battle
array till night, and got good rest and refreshment at a neigh-
bouring village. The French were now all lying in another
village, through which they knew the English must pass. They
were resolved that the English should begin the battle. The
English had no means of retreat, if their King had had any
such intention ; and so the two armies passed the night,
close together.
To understand these armies well, you must bear in mind that
the immense French army had, among its notable persons,
almost the whole of that wicked nobility, whose debauchery had
made France a desert ; and so besotted were they by pride, and
by contempt for the common people, that they had scarcely any
bowmen (if indeed they had any at all) in their whole enormous
number : which, compared with the English army, was at least
as six to one. For these proud fools had said that the bow was
not a fit weapon for knightly hands, and that France must be
defended by gentlemen only. We shall see, presently, what
hand the gentlemen made of it.
Now, on the English side, among the little force, there was
a good proportion of men who were not gentlemen by any
means, but who were good stout archers for all that. Among
them, in the morning — shaving slept little at night, while the
French were carousing and making sure of victory — the King
rode, on a grey horse ; wearing on his head a helmet of shining
steel, surmounted by a crown of gold, sparkling with precious
stones ; and bearing over his armour, embroidered together, the
arms of England and the arms of France. The archers looked
at the shining helmet and the crown of gold and the sparkling
jewels, and admired them all ; but, what they admired most was
the King's cheerful face, and his bright blue eye, as he told them
that, for himself, he had made up his mind to conquer there or
to die there, and that England should never have a ransom to
pay for him. There was one brave knight who chanced to say
that he wished some of the many gallant gentlemen and good
220 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
soldiers, who were then idle at home in England, were there to
increase their numbers. But the King told him that, for his
part, he did not wish for one more man. " The fewer we have,"
said he, " the greater will be the honour we shall win ! " His
men, being now all in good heart, were refreshed with bread and
wine, and heard prayers, and waited quietly for the French.
The King waited for the French, because they were drawn up
thirty deep (the little English force was only three deep), on
very difficult and heavy ground ; and he knew that when they
moved, there must be confusion among them.
As they did not move, he sent off two parties : — one, to lie
concealed in a wood on the left of the French : the other, to
set fire to some houses behind the French after the battle
should be begun. This was scarcely done, when three of the
proud French gentlemen, who were to defend their country
without any help from the base peasants, came riding out,
calling upon the English to surrender. The King warned those
gentlemen himself to retire with all speed if they, cared for their
lives, and ordered the English banners to advance. Upon that,
Sir Thomas Erpingham, a great English general, who com-
manded the archers, threw his truncheon into the air, joyfully ;
and all the English men, kneeling down upon the ground and
biting it as if they took possession of the country, rose up with
a great shout and fell upon the French.
Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped with
iron ; and his orders were, to thrust this stake into the ground,
to discharge his arrow, and then to fall back, when the French
horsemen came on. As the haughty French gentlemen, who
were to break the English archers and utterly destroy them
with their knightly lances, came riding up, they were received
with such a blinding storm of arrows, that they broke and
turned. Horses and men rolled over one another, and the
confusion was terrific. Those who rallied and charged the
archers got among the stakes on slippery and boggy ground,
and were so bewildered, that the English archers — who wore no
armour, and even took ofif their leathern coats to be more
active — cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three
French horsemen got within the stakes, and those were instantly
despatched. All this time the dense French army, being in
AT THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT
HENRY THE FIFTH
223
armour, were sinking knee-deep into the mire ; while the light
English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active as if they
were fighting on a marble floor.
But now, the second division of the French coming to the
relief of the first, closed up in a firm mass ; the English, headed
by the King, attacked them ; and the deadliest part of the
battle began. The King's brother, the Duke of Clarence, was
struck down, and numbers of the French surrounded him ; but,
King Henry, standing over the body, fought like a lion until
they were beaten off.
Presently, came up a band of eighteen French knights,
bearing the banner of a certain French lord, who had sworn to
kill or take the English King. One of them struck him such
a blow with a battle-axe that he reeled and fell upon his knees ;
but, his faithful men, immediately closing round him, killed
every one of those eighteen knights, and so that French lord
never kept his oath.
The French Duke of Alengon, seeing this, made a desperate
charge, and cut his way close up to the Royal Standard of
England. He beat down the Duke of York, who was standing
near it ; and, when the King came to his rescue, struck off a
piece of the crown he wore. But, he never struck another blow in
this world ; for, even as he was in the act of saying who he was,
and that he surrendered to the King ; and even as the King
stretched out his hand to give him a safe and honourable accept-
ance of the offer : he fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds.
The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The third
division of the French army, which had never struck a blow
yet, and which was, in itself, more than double the whole English
power, broke and fled. At this time of the fight, the English,
who as yet had made no prisoners, began to take them in
immense numbers, and were still occupied in doing so, or in
killing those who would not surrender, when a great noise arose
in the rear of the French — their flying banners were seen to stop
— and King Henry, supposing a great reinforcement to have
arrived, gave orders that all the prisoners should be put to
death. As soon, however, as it was found that the noise was
only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants, the terrible
massacre was stopped.
224 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Then King Henry called to him the French herald, and
asked him to whom the victory belonged.
The herald replied, " To the King of England."
" We have not made this havoc and slaughter," said the
King. " It is the wrath of Heaven on the sins of France. What
is the name of that castle yonder ? "
The herald answered him, " My lord, it is the castle of
Azincourt."
Said the King, " From henceforth this battle shall be known
to posterity, by the name of the battle of Azincourt."
Our English historians have made it Agincourt ; but, under
that name, it will ever be famous in English annals.
The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three
Dukes were killed, two more were taken prisoners, seven
Counts were killed, three more were taken prisoners, and
ten thousand knights and gentlemen were slain upon the
field. The English loss amounted to sixteen hundred
men, among whom were the Duke of York and the Earl of
Suffolk.
War is a dreadful thing ; and it is appalling to know how
the English were obliged, next morning, to kill those prisoners
mortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony upon the ground ;
how the dead upon the French side were stripped by their own
countrymen and countrywomen, and afterwards buried in great
pits ; how the dead upon the English side were piled up in a
great barn, and how their bodies and the barn were all burned
together. It is in such things, and in many more much too
horrible to relate, that the real desolation and wickedness of
war consist. Nothing can make war otherwise than horrible.
But the dark side of it was little thought of and soon forgotten ;
and it cast no shade of trouble on the English people, except on
those who had lost friends or relations in the fight. They
welcomed their King home with shouts of rejoicing, and
plunged into the water to bear him ashore on their shoulders,
and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every town
through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and tapestries
out of the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and
made the fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt
had run with blood.
HENRY THE FIFTH 225
Second Part
That proud and wicked French nobility who dragged their
country to destruction, and who were every day and every year
regarded with deeper hatred and detestation in the hearts of
the French people, learnt nothing, even from the defeat of
Agincourt. So far from uniting against the common enemy,
they became, among themselves, more violent, more bloody,
and more false — if that were possible — than they had been
before. The Count of Armagnac persuaded the French king to
plunder of her treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and to make
her a prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the bitter enemy of
the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge. He
attacked her guards and carried her off to Troyes, where she
proclaimed herself Regent of France, and made him her lieu-
tenant. The Armagnac party were at that time possessed of
Paris ; but, one of the gates of the city being secretly opened
on a certain night to a party of the duke's men, they got into
Paris, threw into the prisons all the Armagnacs upon whom
they could lay their hands, and, a few nights afterwards, with
the aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke the
prisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin was
now dead, and the King's third son bore the title. Him, in
the height of this murderous scene, a French knight hurried
out of bed, wrapped in a sheet, and bore away to Poitiers. So,
when the revengeful Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered
Paris in triumph after the slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin
was proclaimed at Poitiers as the real Regent.
King Henry had not been idle since his victory of Agincourt,
but had repulsed a brave attempt of the French to recover
Harfleur ; had gradually conquered a great part of Normandy ;
and, at this crisis of affairs, took the important town of Rouen,
after a siege of half a year. This great loss so alarmed the
French, that the Duke of Burgundy proposed that a meeting to
treat of peace should be held between the French and the
English kings in a plain by the river Seine. On the appointed
day, King Henry appeared there, with his two brothers, Clarence
and Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortunate French
P
226 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENtJLAJNU
King, being more mad than usual that day, could not come ;
but the Queen came, and with her the Princess Catherine : who
was a very lovely creature, and who made a real impression on
King Henry, now that he saw her for the first time. This was
the most important circumstance that arose out of the meeting.
As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of that time
to be true to his word of honour in anything, Henry discovered
that the Duke of Burgundy was, at that very moment, in secret
treaty with the Dauphin ; and he therefore abandoned the
negotiation.
The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each of whom
with the best reason distrusted the other as a noble ruffian
surrounded by a party of noble ruffians, were rather at a loss
how to proceed after this ; but, at length they agreed to meet,
on a bridge over the river Yonne, where it was arranged that
there should be two strong gates put up, with an empty space
between them ; and that the Duke of Burgundy should come
into that space by one gate, with ten men only ; and that the
Dauphin should come into that space by the other gate, also
with ten men, and no more.
So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no farther. When
the Duke of Burgundy was on his knee before him in the act
of speaking, one of the Dauphin's noble ruffians cut the said
duke down with a small axe, and others speedily finished him.
It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that this base
murder was not done with his consent ; it was too bad, even for
France, and caused a general horror. The duke's heir hastened
to make a treaty with King Henry, and the French Queen
engaged that her husband should consent to it, whatever it was.
Henry made peace, on condition of receiving the Princess
Catherine in marriage, and being made Regent of France
during the rest of the King's lifetime, and succeeding to the
French crown at his death. He was soon married to the
beautiful Princess, and took her proudly home to England,
where she was crowned with great honour and glory.
This peace was called the Perpetual Peace ; we shall soon
see how long it lasted. It gave great satisfaction to the French
people, although they were so poor and miserable, that, at the
time of the celebration of the Royal marriage, numbers of them
HENRY THE FIFTH
227
were dying with starvation, on the dunghills in the streets of
Paris. There was some resistance on the part of the Dauphin
in some few parts of France, but King Henry beat it all down.
And now, with his great possessions in France secured, and
his beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son born to give him
greater happiness, all appeared bright before him. But, in the
fulness of his triumph and the height of his power. Death came
upon him, and his day was done. When he fell ill at Vincennes,
and found that he could not recover, he was very calm and
quiet, and spoke serenely to those who wept around his bed.
His wife and child, he said, he left to the loving care of his
brother the Duke of Bedford, and other faithful nobles. He
gave them his advice that England should establish a friendship
with the new Duke of Burgundy, and offer him the regency of
France ; that it should not set free the royal princes who had
been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel might
arise with France, England should never make peace without
holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked
the attendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid
which solemn sounds, on the thirty-first of August, one thousand
four hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year
of his age and the tenth of his reign. King Henry the Fifth
passed away.
Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in
a procession of great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen where
his Queen was : from whom the sad intelligence of his death
was concealed until he had been dead some days. Thence,
lying on a bed of crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon
the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless
hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a great retinue as
seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted
as chief mourner, all the Royal Household followed, the knights
wore black armour and black plumes of feathers, crowds of men
bore torches, making the night as light as day ; and the widowed
Princess followed last of all. At Calais there was a fleet of ships
to bring the funeral host to Dover, and so, by way of London
Bridge, where the service for the dead was chanted as it passed
along, they brought the body to Westminster Abbey, and there
buried it with great respect.
228 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CHAPTER XXII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH
Part the First
It had been the wish of the late King, that while his infant
son King Henry the Sixth, at this time only nine
months old, was under age, the Duke of Gloucester should
be appointed Regent. The English Parliament, however,
preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, with the Duke
of Bedford at its head: to be represented, in his absence
only, by the Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament would
seem to have been wise in this, for Gloucester soon showed
himself to be ambitious and troublesome, and, in the grati-
fication of his own personal schemes, gave dangerous
offence to the Duke of Burgundy, which was with difficulty
adjusted.
As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was bestowed
HENRY THE SIXTH 229
by the poor French King upon the Duke of Bedford. But, the
French King dying within two months, the Dauphin instantly
asserted his claim to the French throne, and was actually
crowned under the title of CHARLES THE Seventh. The
Duke of Bedford, to be a match for him, entered into a friendly
league with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, and gave
them his two sisters in marriage. War with France was
immediately renewed, and the Perpetual Peace came to an
untimely end.
In the first campaign, the English, aided by this alliance,
were speedily successful. As Scotland, however, had sent
the French five thousand men, and might send more,
or attack the North of England while England was busy
with France, it was considered that it would be a good
thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had been so
long imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand
pounds for his board and lodging during nineteen years,
and engaging to forbid his subjects from serving under
the flag of France. It is pleasant to know, not only that
the amiable captive at last regained his freedom upon
these terms, but, that he married a noble English lady,
with whom he had been long in love, and became an ex-
cellent King. I am afraid we have met with some Kings
in this history, and shall meet with some more, who would
have been very much the better, and would have left the
world much happier, if they had been imprisoned nineteen
years too.
In the second campaign, the English gained a considerable
victory at Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly remarkable,
otherwise, for their resorting to the odd expedient of tying
their baggage-horses together by the heads and tails, and
jumbling them up with the baggage, so as to convert them
into a sort of live fortification — which was found useful to
the troops, but which I should think was not agreeable to
the horses. For three years afterwards very little was done,
owing to both sides being too poor for war, which is a very
expensive entertainment ; but, a council was then held in
Paris, in which it was decided to lay siege to the town
of Orleans, which was a place of great importance to the
23° A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
An Archer of Henry VI
Dauphin's cause. An English
army of ten thousand men was
despatched on this service,
under the command of the
Earl of Salisbury, a general
of fame. He being unfor-
tunately killed early in the
siege, the Earl of Suffolk took
his place; under whom (rein-
forced by Sir John Falstaff,
who brought up four hundred
waggons laden with salt her-
rings and other provisions for
the troops, and, beating off the
French who tried to intercept
him, came victorious out of a
hot skirmish, which was after-
wards called in jest the Battle
of the Herrings), the town of
Orleans was so completely
hemmed in, that the besieged
proposed to yield it up to
their countryman the Duke
of Burgundy. The English
general, however, replied that
his English men had won
it, so far, by their blood and
valour, and that his English
men must have it. There
seemed to be no hope for
the town, or for the Dau-
phin, who was so dismayed
that he even thought of fly-
ing to Scotland or to Spain
— when a peasant girl rose
up and changed the whole
state of affairs.
The story of this peasant
girl I have now to tell.
HENRY THE SIXTH 231
Part the Second
the story of joan of arc
In a remote village among some wild hills in the province of
Lorraine, there lived a countryman whose name was JACQUES
d'Arc. He had a daughter, JOAN of Arc, who was at this
time in her twentieth year. She had been a solitary girl from
her childhood ; she had often tended sheep and cattle for whole
days where no humdn figure was seen or human voice heard ;
and she had often knelt, for hours together, in the gloomy empty
little village chapel, looking up at the altar and at the dim lamp
burning before it, until she fancied that she saw shadowy figures
standing there, and even that she heard them speak to her.
The people in that part of France were very ignorant and
superstitious, and they had many ghostly tales to tell about
what they dreamed, and what they saw among the lonely
hills when the clouds and the mists were resting on them. So,
they easily believed that Joan saw strange sights, and they
whispered among themselves that angels and spirits talked to
her.
At last, Joan told her father that she had one day been
surprised by a great unearthly light, and had afterwards heard a
solemn voice, which said it was Saint Michael's voice, telling
her that she was to go and help the Dauphin. Soon after this
(she said), Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had appeared to
her, with sparkling crowns upon their heads, and had encouraged
her to be virtuous and resolute. These visions had returned
sometimes ; but the Voices very often ; and the voices always
said, " Joan, thou art appointed by Heaven to go and help the
Dauphin!" She almost always heard them while the chapel
bells were ringing.
There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed she saw and
heard these things. It is very well known that such delusions
are a disease which is not by any means uncommon. It is
probable enough that there were figures of Saint Michael, and
Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, in the little chapel (where
they would be very likely to have shining crowns upon their
232 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
heads), and that they first gave Joan the idea of those three
personages. She had long been a moping, fanciful girl, and,
though she was a very good girl, I dare say she was a little vain,
and wishful for notoriety.
Her father, something wiser than his neighbours, said, "I
tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better have a kind
husband to take care of thee, girl, and work to employ thy
mind ! " But Joan told him in reply, that she had taken a vow
never to have a husband, and that she must go as Heaven
directed her, to help the Dauphin.
It happened, unfortunately for her father's persuasions, and
most unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that a party of the
Dauphin's enemies found their way into the village while Joan's
disorder was at this point, and burnt the chapel, and drove out
the inhabitants. The cruelties she saw committed, touched
Joan's heart and made her worse. She said that the voices and
the figures were now continually with her ; that they told her
she was the girl who, according to an old prophecy, was to
deliver France ; and she must go and help the Dauphin, and
must remain with him until he should be crowned at Rheims :
and that she must travel a long way to a certain lord named
Baudricourt, who could and would, bring her into the
Dauphin's presence.
As her father still said, " I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy,"
she set off to find out this lord, accompanied by an uncle, a poor
village wheelwright and cart-maker, who believed in the reality
of her visions. They travelled a long way and went on and on,
over a rough country, full of the Duke of Burgundy's men, and
of all kinds of robbers and marauders, until they came to where
this lord was.
When his servants told him that there was a poor peasant girl
named Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but an old village
wheelwright and cart-maker, who wished to see him because
she was commanded to help the Dauphin and save France,
Baudricourt burst out a-laughing, and bade them send the girl
away. But, he soon heard so much about her lingering in the
town, and praying in the churches, and seeing visions, and doing
harm to no one, that he sent for her, and questioned her. As
she said the same things after she had been well sprinkled with
HENRY THE SIXTH
^33
holy water as she had said before the sprinkling, Baudricourt
began to think there might be something in it. At all events,
he thought it worth while to send her on to the town of Chinon,
where the Dauphin was. So, he bought her a horse, and a
sword, and gave her two squires to conduct her. As the Voices
had told Joan that she was to wear a man's dress, now, she put
one on, and girded her sword to her side, and bound spurs to
her heels, and mounted her horse and rode away with her two
squires. As to her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at
his niece in wonder until she was out of sight — as well he might
— and then went home again. The best place, too.
Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they came to
Chinon, where she was, after some doubt, admitted into the
Dauphin's presence. Picking him out immediately from all his
court, she told him that she came commanded by Heaven to
subdue his enemies and conduct him to his coronation at Rheims.
She also told him (or he pretended so afterwards, to make the
greater impression upon his soldiers) a number of his secrets
known only to himself, and, furthermore, she said there
was an old, old sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine at
Fierbois, marked with five old crosses on the blade, which Saint
Catherine had ordered her to wear.
Now, nobody knew anything about this old, old sword, but
when the cathedral came to be examined — which was immedi-
ately done — there, sure enough, the sword was found ! The
Dauphin then required a number of grave priests and bishops
to give him their opinion whether the girl derived her power
from good spirits or from evil spirits, which they held pro-
digiously long debates about, in the course of which several
learned men fell fast asleep and snored loudly. At last, when
one gruff old gentleman had said to Joan, "What language
do your Voices speak ? " and when Joan had replied to the gruff
old gentleman, " A pleasanter language than yours," they agreed
that it was all correct, and that Joan of Arc was inspired from
Heaven. This wonderful circumstance put new heart into the
Dauphin's soldiers when they heard of it, and dispirited the
English army, who took Joan for a witch.
So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and on,
until she came to Orleans. But she rode now, as never peasant
234 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
girl had ridden yet. She rode upon a white war-horse, in a
suit of glittering armour; with the old, old sword from the
cathedral, newly burnished, in her belt ; with a white flag carried
before her, upon which were a picture of God, and the words
Jesus Maria. In this splendid state, at the head of a great
body of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for the starving
inhabitants of Orleans, she appeared before that beleaguered
city.
When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried out
" The Maid is come ! The Maid of the Prophecy is come to
deliver us ! " And this, and the sight of the Maid fighting at the
head of their men, made the French so bold, and made the
English so fearful, that the English line of forts was soon
broken, the troops and provisions were got into the town, and
Orleans was saved.
Joan, henceforth called THE MAID OF ORLEANS, remained
within the walls for a few days, and caused letters to be thrown
over, ordering Lord Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from
before the town according to the will of Heaven. As the
English general very positively declined to believe that Joan
knew anything about the will of Heaven (which did not mend
the matter with his soldiers, for they stupidly said if she were
not inspired she was a witch, and it was of no use to fight
against a witch), she mounted her white war-horse again, and
ordered her white banner to advance.
The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong towers upon
the bridge ; and here the Maid of Orleans attacked them. The
fight was fourteen hours long. She planted a scaling ladder
with her own hands, and mounted a tower wall, but was struck
by an English arrow in the neck, and fell into the trench. She
was carried away and the arrow was taken out, during which
operation she screamed and cried with the pain, as any other girl
might have done ; but presently she said that the Voices were
speaking to her and soothing her to rest. After a while, she
got up, and was again foremost in the fight. When the English
who had seen her fall and supposed her to be dead, saw this, they
were troubled with the strangest fears, and some of them cried
out that they beheld Saint Michael on a white horse (probably
Joan herself) fighting for the French. They lost the bridge, and
HENRY THE SIXTH
^37
lost the towers, and next day set their chain of forts on fire, and
left the place.
But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than the
town of Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, the Maid of
Orleans besieged him there, and he was taken prisoner. As
the white banner scaled the wall, she was struck upon the head
with a stone, and was again tumbled down into the ditch ; but
she only cried all the more, as she lay there, "On, on, my
countrymen ! And fear nothing, for the Lord hath delivered
them into our hands ! " After this new success of the Maid's,
several other fortresses and places which had previously
held out against the Dauphin were delivered up without a
battle ; and at Patay she defeated the remainder of the English
army, and set up her victorious white banner on a field where
twelve hundred Englishmen lay dead.
She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept out of the
way when there was any fighting) to proceed to Rheims, as the
first part of her mission was accomplished ; and to complete the
whole by being crowned there. The Dauphin was in no
particular hurry to do this, as Rheims was a long way off, and
the English and the Duke of Burgundy were still strong in the
country through which the road lay. However, they set forth,
with ten thousand men, and again the Maid of Orleans rode
on and on, upon her white war-horse, and in her shining armour.
Whenever they came to a town which yielded readily, the
soldiers believed in her ; but, whenever they came to a town
which gave them any trouble, they began to murmur that she
was an impostor. The latter was particularly the case at
Troyes, which finally yielded, however, through the persuasion
of one Richard, a friar of the place. Friar Richard was in the
old doubt about the Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her
well with holy water, and had also well sprinkled the threshold
of the gate by which she came into the city. Finding that it made
no change in her or the gate, he said, as the other grave old
gentlemen had said, that it was all right, and became her great ally.
So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid of Orleans
and the Dauphin, and the ten thousand sometimes believing and
sometimes unbelieving men, came to Rheims. And in the great
cathedral of Rheims, the Dauphin actually was crowned Charles
238 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the Seventh in a great assembly of the people. Then, the
Maid, who with her white banner stood beside the King in that
hour of his triumph, kneeled down upon the pavement at his
feet, and said, with tears, that what she had been inspired to do,
was done, and that the only recompense she asked for, was,
that she should now have leave to go back to her distant home,
and her sturdily incredulous father, and her first simple escort
the village wheelwright and cartmaker. But the King said
" No ! " and made her and her family as noble as a King could,
and settled upon her the income of a Count.
Ah ! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans, if she had
resumed her rustic dress that day, and had gone home to the
little chapel and the wild hills, and had forgotten all these
things, and had been a good man's wife, and had heard no
stranger voices than the voices of little children!
It was not to be, and she continued helping the King (she
did a world for him, in alliance with Friar Richard), and trying
to improve the lives of the coarse soldiers, and leading a
religious, an unselfish, and a modest life, herself, beyond any
doubt. Still, many times she prayed the King to let her go
home ; and once she even took off her bright armour and
hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear it more. But,
the King always won her back again — while she was of any
use to him — and so she went on and on and on, to her doom.
When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very able man,
began to be active for England, and, by bringing the war back
into France and by holding the Duke of Burgundy to his
faith, to distress and disturb Charles very much, Charles some-
times asked the Maid of Orleans what the Voices said about
it? But, the Voices had become (very like ordinary voices
in perplexed times) contradictory and confused, so that now
they said one thing, and now said another, and the Maid lost
credit every day. Charles marched on Paris, which was
opposed to him, and attacked the suburb of Saint Honore.
In this fight, being again struck down into the ditch, she
was abandoned by the whole army. She lay unaided among
a heap of dead, and crawled out how she could. Then, some
of her believers went over to an opposition Maid, Catherine
of La Rochelle, who said she was inspired to tell where there
HENRY THE SIXTH 239
were treasures of buried money — though she never did — and
then Joan accidentally broke the old, old sword, and others
said that her power was broken with it. Finally, at the siege
of Compiegne, held by the Duke of Burgundy, where she
did valiant service, she was basely left alone in a retreat,
though facing about and fighting to the last; and an archer
pulled her off her horse.
0 the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that
were sung, about the capture of this one poor country-girl ! O
the way in which she was demanded to be tried for sorcery
and heresy, and anything else you like, by the Inquisitor-
General of France, and by this great man, and by that great
man, until it is wearisome to think of! She was bought at
last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and
was shut up in her narrow prison : plain Joan of Arc again,
and Maid of Orleans no more.
1 should never have done if I were to tell you how they
had Joan out to examine her, and cross-examine her, and
re-examine her, and worry her into saying anything and every-
thing ; and how all sorts of scholars and doctors bestowed their
utmost tediousness upon her. Sixteen times she was brought
out and shut up again, and worried, and entrapped, and argued
with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary business. On the
last occasion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place
at Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and
faggots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein,
and an awful sermon ready. It is very affecting to know that
even at that pass the poor girl honoured the mean vermin of a
King, who had so used her for his purposes and so abandoned
her J and, that while she had been regardless of reproaches
heaped upon herself, she spoke out courageously for him.
It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save her
life, she signed a declaration prepared for her — signed it with
a cross, for she couldn't write — that all her visions and Voices
had come from the Devil. Upon her recanting the past, and
protesting that she would never wear a man's dress in future,
she was condemned to imprisonment for life, "on the bread
of sorrow and the water of affliction."
But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction,
240 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the visions and the Voices soon returned. It was quite
natural that they should do so, for that kind of disease is
much aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of mind.
It was not only got out of Joan that she considered herself
inspired again, but, she was taken in a man's dress, which
had been left — to entrap her — in her prison, and which she
put on, in her solitude; perhaps, in remembrance of her past
glories, perhaps, because the imaginary Voices told her. For
this relapse into the sorcery and heresy and anything else you
like, she was sentenced to be burnt to death. And, in the
market-place of Rouen, in the hideous dress which the monks
had invented for such spectacles; with priests and bishops
sitting in a gallery looking on, though some had the Christian
grace to go away, unable to endure the infamous scene ; this
shrieking girl — last seen amidst the smoke and fire, holding a
crucifix between her hands ; last heard, calling upon Christ —
was burnt to ashes. They threw her ashes into the river Seine ;
but they will rise against her murderers on the last day.
From the moment of her capture, neither the French King
nor one single man in all his court raised a finger to save her.
It is no defence of them that they may have never really
believed in her, or that they may have won her victories by
their skill and bravery. The more they pretended to believe
in her, the more they had caused her to believe in herself;
and she had ever been true to them, ever brave, ever nobly
devoted. But, it is no wonder, that they, who were in all things
false to themselves, false to one another, false to their country,
false to Heaven, and false to Earth, should be monsters of in-
gratitude and treachery to a helpless peasant girl.
In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds and
grass grow high on the cathedral towers, and the venerable
Norman streets are still warm in the blessed sunlight though
the monkish fires that once gleamed horribly upon them have
long grown cold, there is a statue of Joan of Arc, in the scene
of her last agony, the square to which she has given its present
name. I know some statues of modern times— even in the
World's metropolis, I think — which commemorate less con-
stancy, less earnestness, smaller claims upon the world's
attention, and much greater impostors.
HENRY THE SIXTH
241
THE MAKING OF WAXEN IMAGES
Part the Third
Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind ; and the
English cause gained no advantage from the cruel death of Joan
of Arc. For a long time, the war went heavily on. The Duke
of Bedford died ; the alliance with the Duke of Burgundy was
broken ; and Lord Talbot became a great general on the
English side in France. But, two of the consequences of wars
are. Famine — because the people cannot peacefully cultivate the
ground — and Pestilence, which comes of want, misery, and
suffering. Both these horrors broke out in both countries, and
lasted for two wretched years. Then, the war went on again,
and came by slow degrees to be so badly conducted by the
English government, that, within twenty years from the execution
of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French conquests, the
town of Calais alone remained in English hands.
While these victories and defeats were taking place in the
Q
242 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
course of time, many strange things happened at home. The
young King, as he grew up, proved to be very unlike his great
father, and showed himself a miserable puny creature. There
was no harm in him — he had a great aversion to shedding blood :
which was something — but, he was a weak, silly, helpless young
man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great lordly battledores
about the Court.
Of these battledores. Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the
King, and the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most
powerful. The Duke of Gloucester had a wife, who was
nonsensically accused of practising witchcraft to cause the King's
death and lead to her husband's coming to the throne, he being
the next heir. She was charged with having, by the help of a
ridiculous old woman named Margery (who was called a witch),
made a little waxen doll in the King's likeness, and put it before
a slow fire that it might gradually melt away. It was supposed,
in such cases, that the death of the person whom the doll
was made to represent, was sure to happen. Whether the
duchess was as ignorant as the rest of them, and really did
make such a doll with such an intention, I don't know ; but, you
and I know very well that she might have made a thousand
dolls, if she had been stupid enough, and might have melted
them all, without hurting the King or anybody else. However,
she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, and so was one of
the duke's chaplains, who was charged with having assisted them.
Both he and Margery were put to death, and the duchess, after
being taken, on foot and bearing a lighted candle, three times
round the City as a penance, was imprisoned for life. The
duke, himself, took all this pretty quietly, and made as little
stir about the matter as if he were rather glad to be rid of the
duchess.
But, he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble long.
The royal shuttlecock being three-and-twenty, the battledores
were very anxious to get him married. The Duke of Gloucester
wanted him to marry a daughter of the Count of Armagnac ;
but, the Cardinal and the Earl of Suffolk were all for Margaret,
the daughter of the King of Sicily, who they knew was a resolute
ambitious woman and would govern the King as she chose.
To make friends with this lady, the Earl of Suffolk, who went
HENRY THE SIXTH
over to arrange the match, consented to accept her for the King's
wife without any fortune, and even to give up the two most
valuable possessions England then had in France. So, the
marriage was arranged, on terms very advantageous to the lady ;
and Lord Suffolk brought her to England, and she was married
at Westminster. On what pretence this queen and her party
charged the Duke of Gloucester with high treason within a
couple of years, it is impossible to make out, the matter is so
confused ; but, they pretended that the King's life was in
danger, and they took the duke prisoner. A fortnight after-
wards, he was found dead in bed (they said), and his body was
shown to the people, and Lord Suffolk came in for the best part
of his estates. You know by this time how strangely liable
state prisoners were to sudden death.
If Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it did him
no good, for he died within six weeks; thinking it very hard
and curious-^at eighty years old ! — that he could not live to be
Pope.
This was the time when England had, completed her loss of
all her great French conquests. The people charged the loss
principally upon the Earl of Suffolk, now a duke, who had made
244 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
those easy terms about the Royal Marriage, and who, they
believed, had even been bought by France. So he was im-
peached as a traitor, on a great number of charges, but chiefly
on accusations of having aided the French King, and of designing
to make his own son King of England. The Commons and
the people being violent against him, the King was made (by
his friends) to interpose to save him, by banishing him for five
years, and proroguing the Parliament. The duke had much
ado to escape from a London mob, two thousand strong, who
lay in wait for him in St Giles's fields ; but, he got down to his
own estates in Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich. Sailing
across the Channel, he sent into Calais to know if he might land
there ; but, they kept his boat and men in the harbour, until an
English ship, carrying a hundred and fifty men and called the
Nicholas of the Tower, came alongside his little vessel, and
ordered him on board. "Welcome, traitor, as men say," was
the captain's grim and not very respectful salutation. He was
kept on board, a prisoner, for eight-and-forty hours, and then a
small boat appeared rowing toward the ship. As this boat
came nearer, it was seen to have in it a block, a rusty sword, aiid
an executioner in a black mask. The duke was handed down
into it, and there his head was cut off with six strokes of the
rusty sword. Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover
beach, where the body was cast out, and left until the duchess
claimed it. By whom, high in authority, this murder was
committed, has never appeared. No one was ever punished
for it.
There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave himself the
name of Mortimer, but whose real name was JACK CADE.
Jack, in imitation of Wat Tyler, though he was a very different
and inferior sort of man, addressed the Kentish men upon their
wrongs, occasioned by the bad government of England, among
so many battledores and such a poor shuttlecock ; and the
Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty thousand. Their
place of assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by Jack, they
put forth two papers, which they called " The Complaint of the
Commons of Kent," and " The Requests of the Captain of the
Great Assembly in Kent." They then retired to Sevenoaks.
The royal army coming up with them here, they beat it and
HENRY THE SIXTH 245
killed their general. Then Jack dressed himself in the dead
general's armour, and led his men to London,
Jack passed into the City from South wark, over the bridge,
arid entered it in triumph, giving the strictest orders to his men
not to plunder. Having made a show of his forces there, while
the citizens looked on quietly, he went back into Southwark in
good order, and passed the night. Next day, he came back
again, having got hold in the meantime of Lord Say, an un-
popular nobleman. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor and judges :
" Will you be so good as to make a tribunal in Guildhall, and
try me this nobleman?" The court being hastily made, he was
found guilty, and Jack and his men cut his head off on Cornhill.
They also cut off the head of his son-in-law, and then went back
in good order to Southwark again.
But, although the citizens could bear the beheading of an
unpopular lord, they could not bear to have their houses pillaged.
And it did so happen that Jack, after dinner — perhaps he had
drunk a little too much — began to plunder the house where he
lodged ; upon which, of course, his men began to imitate him.
Wherefore, the Londoners took counsel with Lord Scales, who
had a thousand soldiers in the Tower; and defended London
Bridge, and kept Jack and his people out. This advantage
gained, it was resolved by divers great men to divide Jack's
army in the old way, by making a great many promises on
behalf of the state, that were never intended to be performed.
This did divide them ; some of Jack's men saying that they
ought to take the conditions which were offered, and others
saying that they ought not, for they were only a snare ; some
going home at once ; others staying where they were ; and all
doubting and quarrelling among themselves.
Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accepting a
pardon, and who indeed did both, saw at last that there was
nothing to expect from his men, and that it was very likely
some of them would deliver him up and get a reward of a
thousand marks, which was offered for his apprehension. So,
after they had travelled and quarrelled all the way from Souths
wark to Blackheath, and from Blackheath to Rochester, he
mounted a good horse and galloped away into Sussex. But,
there galloped after him, on a better horse, one Alexander Iden,
246 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF EJ^GLAND
who came up with him, had a hard fight with him, and killed
him. Jack's head was set aloft on London Bridge, with the
face looking towards Blackheath, where he had raised his flag ;
and Alexander Iden got the thousand marks.
ALEXANDER IDEN WITH THE HEAD OF JACK CADE
It is supposed by some, that the Duke of York, who had
been removed from a high post abroad through the Queen's
influence, and sent out of the way, to govern Ireland, was at
the bottom of this rising of Jack and his men, because he wanted
to trouble the government. He claimed (though not yet publicly)
to have a better right to the throne than Henry of Lancaster, as
one of the family of the Earl of March, whom Henry the Fourth
had set aside. Touching this claim, which, being through
female relationship, was not according to the usual descent, it
is enough to say that Henry the Fourth was the free choice of
the people and the Parliament, and that his family had now
reigned undisputed for sixty years. The memory of Henry the
Fifth was so famous, and the English people loved it so much,
that the Duke of York's claim would, perhaps, never have been
HENRY THE SIXTH 247
thought of (it would have been so hopeless) but for the unfortunate
circumstance of the present King's being by this time quite an
idiot, and the country very ill governed. These two circum-
stances gave the Duke of York a power he could not otherwise
have had.
Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack Cade, or not, he
came over from Ireland while Jack's head was on London
Bridge ; being secretly advised that the Queen was setting up
his enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against him. He went to
Westminster, at the head of four thousand men, and on his
knees before the King, represented to him the bad state of the
country, and petitioned him to summon a Parliament to con-
sider it. This the King promised. When the Parliament was
summoned, the Duke of York accused the Duke of Somerset,
and the Duke of Somerset, accused the Duke of York ; and,
both in and out of Parliament, the followers of each party were
full of violence and hatred towards the other. At length the
Duke of York put himself at the head of a large force of his
tenants, and, in arms, demanded the reformation of the Govern-
ment. Being shut out of London, he encamped at Dartford,
and the royal army encamped at Blackheath. According as
either side triumphed, the Duke of York was arrested, or the
Duke of Somerset was arrested. The trouble ended, for the
moment, in the Duke of York renewing his oath of allegiance,
and going in peace to one of his own castles.
Half a year afterwards the Queen gave birth to a son, who
was very ill received by the people, and not believed to be the
son of the King. It shows the Duke of York to have been a
moderate man, unwilling to involve England in new troubles,
that he did not take advantage of the general discontent at this
time, but really acted for the public good. He was made a
member of the cabinet, and the King being now so much worse
that he could not be carried about and shown to the people with
any decency, the duke was made Lord Protector of the Kingdom,
until the King should recover, or the Prince should come of age.
At the same time the Duke of Somerset was committed to the
Tower. So, now the Duke of Somerset was down, and the Duke
of York was up. By the end of the year, however, the King
recovered his memory and some spark of sense ; upon which the
248 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Queen used her power — which recovered with him — to get the
Protector disgraced, and her favourite released. So now the
Duke of York was down, and the Duke of Somerset was up.
These ducal ups and downs gradually separated the whole
nation into the two parties of York and Lancaster, and led to
those terrible civil wars long known as the Wars of the Red and
White Roses, because the red rose was the badge of the House
of Lancaster, and the white rose was the badge of the House of
York.
The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful noblemen
of the White Rose party, and leading a small army, met the
King with another small army at St Alban's, and demanded
that the Duke of Somerset should be given up. The poor
King, being made to say in answer that he would sooner die,
was instantly attacked. The Duke of Somerset was killed, and
the King himself was wounded in the neck, and took refuge in
the house of a poor tanner. Whereupon, the Duke of York
went to him, led him with great submission to the Abbey, and
said he was very sorry for what had happened. Having now
the King in his possession, he got a Parliament summoned and
himself once more made Protector, but, only for a few months ;
for, on the King getting a little better again, the Queen and her
party got him into their possession, and disgraced the Duke once
more. So, now the Duke of York was down again.
Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of these con-
stant changes, tried even then to prevent the Red and the White
Rose Wars. They brought about a great council in London
between the two parties. The White Roses assembled in Black-
friars, the Red Roses in Whitefriars ; and some good priests com-
municated between them, and made the proceedings known
at evening to the King and the judges. They ended in a
peaceful agreement that there should be no more quarrelling ;
and there was a great royal procession to St Paul's, in which
the Queen walked arm-in-arm with her old enemy, the Duke
of York, to show the people how comfortable they all were.
This state of peace lasted half a year, when a dispute between
the Earl of Warwick (one of the Duke's powerful friends) and
some of the King's servants at Court, led to an attack upon that
Earl — who was a White Rose — and to a sudden breaking out of
HENRY THE SIXTH 249
all old animosities. So, here were greater ups and downs than
ever.
There were even greater ups and downs than these, soon
after. After various battles, the Duke of York fled to Ireland,
and his son the Earl of March to Calais, with their friends the
Earls of Salisbury and Warwick ; and a Parliament was held
declaring them all traitors. Little the worse for this, the Earl
of Warwick presently came back, landed in Kent, was joined
by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other powerful noblemen
and gentlemen, engaged the King's forces at Northampton,
signally defeated them, and took the King himself prisoner,
who was found in his tent. Warwick would have been glad, I
dare say, to have taken the Queen and Prince too, but they
escaped into Wales and thence into Scotland.
The King was carried by the victorious force straight to
London, and made to call a new Parliament, which immediately
declared that the Duke of York and those other noblemen were
not traitors, but excellent subjects. Then, back comes the Duke
from Ireland at the head of five hundred horsemen, rides from
London to Westminster, and enters the House of Lords. There,
he laid his hand upon the cloth of gold which covered the
empty throne, as if he had half a mind to sit down in it — but
he did not. On the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him if
he would visit the King, who was in his palace close by, he
replied " I know no one in this country, my lord, who ought
not to visit me." None of the lords present, spoke a single
word ; so, the duke went out as he had come in, established
himself royally in the King's palace, and, six days afterwards,
sent in to the Lords a formal statement of his claim to the
throne. The lords went to the King on this momentous subject,
and after a great deal of discussion, in which the judges and
the other law ofiScers were afraid to give an opinion on either
side, the question was compromised. It was agreed that the
present King should retain the crown for his life, and that it
should then pass to the Duke of York and his heirs.
But, the resolute Queen, determined on asserting her son's
rights, would hear of no such thing. She came from Scotland
to the north of England, where several powerful lords armed
in her cause. The Duke of York, for his part, set off with some
250 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
five thousand men, a little time before Christmas day, one
thousand four hundred and sixty, to give her battle. He
lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and the Red Roses
defied him to come out on Wakefield Green, and fight them
then and there. His generals said, he had best wait until his
gallant son, the Earl of March, came up with his power ; but,
he was determined to accept the challenge. He did so, in an
evil hour. He was hotly pressed on all sides, two thousand of
his men lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he himself was
taken prisoner. They set him down in mock state on an
ant-hill, and twisted grass about his head, and pretended to
pay court to him on their knees, saying, " O King, without a
kingdom, and Prince without a people, we hope your gracious
Majesty is very well and happy ! " They did worse than this ;
they cut his head off, and handed it on a pole to the Queen,
who laughed with delight when she saw it (you recollect their
walking so religiously and comfortably to St Paul's !), and had
it fixed, with a paper crown upon its head, on the walls of York.
The Earl of Salisbury lost his head, too ; and the Duke of
York's second son, a handsome boy who was flying with his
tutor over Wakefield Bridge, was stabbed in the heart by a
murderous lord — Lord Clifford by name — whose father had
been killed by the White Roses in the fight at St Alban's.
There was awful sacrifice of life in this battle, for no quarter
was given, and the Queen was wild for revenge. When men
unnaturally fight against their own countrymen, they are always
observed to be more unnaturally cruel and filled with rage than
they are against any other enemy.
But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the Duke
of York — not the first. The eldest son, Edward Earl of March,
was at Gloucester ; and, vowing vengeance for the death of his
father, his brother, and their faithful friends, he began to march
against the Queen. He had to turn and fight a great body of
Welsh and Irish first, who worried his advance. These he
defeated in a great fight at Mortimer's Cross, near Hereford,
where he beheaded a number of the Red Roses taken in battle,
in retaliation for the beheading of the White Roses at Wakefield.
The Queen had the next turn of beheading. Having moved
towards London, and falling in, between St Alban's and Barnet,
HENRY THE SIXTH 251
with the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Norfolk, White Roses
both, who were there with an army to oppose her, and had got
the King with them, she defeated them with great loss, and
struck off the heads of two prisoners of note, who were in the
King's tent with him, and to whom the King had promised his
protection. Her triumph, however, was very short. She had
no treasure, and her army subsisted by plunder. This caused
them to be hated and dreaded by the people, and particularly
by the London people, who were wealthy. As soon as the
Londoners heard that Edward, Earl of March, united with
the Earl of Warwick, was advancing towards the city, they
refused to send the Queen supplies, and made a great rejoicing.
The Queen and her men retreated with all speed, and
Edward and Warwick came on, greeted with loud acclamations
on every side. The courage, beauty, and virtues of young
Edward could not be sufficiently praised by the whole people.
He rode into London like a conqueror, and met with an enthusi-
astic welcome. A few days afterwards, Lord Falconbridge
and the bishop of Exeter assembled the citizens in St John's
Field, Clerkenwell, and asked them if they would have Henry
of Lancaster for their King ? To this they all roared, " No, no,
no 1 ", and " King Edward ! King Edward ! " Then, said those
noblemen, would they love and serve young Edward ? To this
they all cried, " Yes, yes ! " and threw up their caps and clapped
their hands, and cheered tremendously.
Therefore, it was declared that by joining the Queen and not
protecting those two prisoners of note, Henry of Lancaster had
forfeited the crown ; and Edward of York was proclaimed
King. He made a great speech to the applauding people at
Westminster, and sat down as sovereign of England on that
throne, on the golden covering of which his father — worthy of
a better fate than the bloody axe which cut the thread of so
many lives in England, through so many years — had laid his
hand.
252 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CHAPTER XXIII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH
King Edward the Fourth was not quite twenty-one years
of age when he took that unquiet seat upon the throne of
England. The Lancaster party, the Red Roses, were then
assembling in great numbers near York, and it was necessary
to give them battle instantly. But, the stout earl of Warwick
leading for the young King, and the young King himself
closely following him, and the English people crowding round
the Royal standard, the White and the Red Roses met, on a
wild March day when the snow was falling heavily, at Towton ;
and there such a furious battle raged between them, that the
total loss amounted to forty thousand men — all Englishmen,
fighting, upon English ground, against one another. The
young King gained the day, took down the heads of his father
and brother from the walls of York, and put up the heads of
some of the most famous noblemen engaged in the battle on
EDWARD THE FOURTH 253
the other side. Then, he went to London and was crowned
with great splendour.
A new Parliament met. No fewer than one hundred and
fifty of the principal noblemen and gentlemen on the Lancaster
side were declared traitors, and the King — who had very little
humanity, though he was handsome in person and agreeable
in manners — resolved to do all he could, to pluck up the Red
Rose root and branch.
Queen Margaret, however, was still active for her young
son. She obtained help from Scotland and from Normandy,
and took several important English castles. But, Warwick soon
retook them ; the Queen lost all her treasure on board ship in
a great storm ; and both she and her son suffered great
misfortunes. Once, in the winter weather, as they were riding
through a forest, they were attacked and plundered by a party
of robbers ; and, when they had escaped from these men and
were passing alone and on foot through a thick dark part of
the wood, they came, all at once, upon another robber. So the
Queen, with a stout heart, took the little Prince by the hand,
and going straight up to that robber, said to him, " My friend,
this is the young son of your lawful King! I confide him to
your care." The robber was surprised, but took the boy in his
arms, and faithfully restored him and his mother to their friends.
In the end, the Queen's soldiers being beaten and dispersed, she
went abroad again, and kept quiet for the present.
Now, all this time, the deposed King Henry was concealed
by a Welsh knight, who kept him close in his castle. But, next
year, the Lancaster party recovering their spirits, raised a large
body of men, and called him out of his retirement, to put him
at their head. They were joined by some powerful noblemen
who had sworn fidelity to the new King, but who were ready, as
usual, to break their oaths, whenever they thought there was
anything to be got by it. One of the worst things in the history
of the war of the Red and White Roses, is the ease with which
these noblemen, who should have set an example of honour to
the people, left either side as they took slight offence, or were
disappointed in their greedy expectations, and joined the other.
Well ! Warwick's brother soon beat the Lancastrians, and the
false noblemen, being taken, were beheaded without a moment's
254 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
loss of time. The deposed King had a narrow escape ; three of
his servants were taken, and one of them bore his cap of estate,
which was set with pearls and embroidered with two golden
crowns. However, the head to which the cap belonged, got
safely into Lancashire, and lay pretty quietly there (the people
in the secret being very true) for more than a year. At length,
an old monk gave such intelligence as led to Henry's being
taken while he was sitting at dinner in a place called Wadding-
ton Hall. He was immediately sent to London, and met at
Islington by the Earl of Warwick, by whose directions he was
put upon a horse, with his legs tied under it, and paraded three
times round the pillory. Then, he was carried off to the Tower,
where they treated him well enough.
The White Rose being so triumphant, the young King
abandoned himself entirely to pleasure, and led a jovial life.
But, thorns were springing up under his bed of roses, as he soon
found out. For, having been privately married to ELIZABETH
WOODVILLE, a young widow lady, very beautiful and very
captivating ; and at last resolving to make his secret known,
and to declare her his Queen ; he gave some offence to the Earl
of Warwick, who was usually called the King-Maker, because of
his power and influence, and because of his having lent such
great help to placing Edward on the throne. This offence was
not lessened by the jealousy with which the Nevil family (the
Earl of Warwick's) regarded the promotion of the Woodville
family. For the young Queen was so bent on providing for her
relations, that she made her father an earl and a great officer of
state ; married her five sisters to young noblemen of the highest
rank ; and provided for her younger brother, a young man of
twenty, by marrying him to an immensely rich old duchess of
eighty. The Earl of Warwick took all this pretty graciously
for a man of his proud temper, until the question arose to whom
the King's sister, Margaret, should be married. The earl of
Warwick said, " To one of the French King's sons," and was
allowed to go over to the French King to make friendly pro-
posals for that purpose, and to hold all manner of friendly
interviews with him. But, while he was so engaged, the
Woodville party married the young lady to the Duke of
Burgundy! Upon this he came back in great rage and
MARGARET AND THE ROBBER
EDWARD THE FOURTH 257
scorn, and shut himself up discontented, in his Castle of
Middleham.
A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was patched
up between the Earl of Warwick and the King, and lasted until
the Earl married his daughter, against the King's wishes, to the
Duke of Clarence. While the marriage was being celebrated at
Calais, the people in the north of England, where the influence
of the Nevil family was strongest, broke out into rebellion ; their
complaint was, that England was oppressed and plundered by
the Woodville family, whom they demanded to have removed,
from power. As they were joined by great numbers of people,
and as they openly declared that they were supported by the
Earl of Warwick, the King did not know what to do. At last,
as he wrote to the earl beseeching his aid, he and his new son-
in-law came over to England, and began to arrange the business
by shutting the King up in Middleham Castle in the safe
keeping of the Archbishop of York ; so England was not only
in the strange position of having two kings at once, but they
were both prisoners at the same time.
Even as yet, however, the King-Maker was so far true to the
King, that he dispersed a new rising of the Lancastrians, took
their leader prisoner, and brought him to the King, who ordered
him to be immediately executed. He presently allowed the
King to return to London, and there innumerable pledges of
forgiveness and friendship were exchanged between them, and
between the Nevils and the Woodvilles ; the King's eldest
daughter was promised in marriage to the heir of the Nevil
family ; and more friendly oaths were sworn, and more friendly
promises made, than this book would hold.
They lasted about three months. At the end of that time,
the Archbishop of York made a feast for the King, the Earl of
Warwick, and the Duke of Clarence, at his house, the Moor, in
Hertfordshire. The King was washing his hands before supper,
when someone whispered him that a body of a hundred men
were lying in ambush outside the house. Whether this were
true or untrue, the King took fright, mounted his horse, and
rode through the dark night to Windsor Castle. Another
reconciliation was patched up between him and the King-Maker,
but it was a short one, and it was the last. A new rising took
R
258 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
place in Lincolnshire, and the King marched to repress it.
Having done so, he proclaimed that both the Earl of Warwick
and the Duke of Clarence were traitors, who had secretly
assisted it, and who had been prepared publicly to join it on
the following day. In these dangerous circumstances they both
took ship and sailed away to the French Court.
And here a meeting took place between the Earl of Warwick
and his old enemy, the Dowager Queen Margaret, through
whom his father had had his head struck off, and to whom he
had been a bitter foe. But, now, when he said that he had done
with the ungrateful and perfidious Edward of York, and that
henceforth he devoted himself to the restoration of the House
of Lancaster, either in the person of her husband or of her little
son, she embraced him as if he had ever been her dearest
friend. She did more than that; she married her son to his
second daughter, the Lady Anne. However agreeable this
marriage was to the two new friends, it was very disagreeable to
the Duke of Clarence, who perceived that his father-in-law, the
King-Maker, would never make him King now. So, being but
a weak-minded young traitor, possessed of very little worth
or sense, he readily listened to an artful court lady sent over for
the purpose, and promised to turn traitor once more, and go
over to his brother, King Edward, when a fitting opportunity
should come.
The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of this, soon
redeemed his promise to the Dowager Queen Margaret, by
invading England and landing at Plymouth, where he instantly
proclaimed King Henry, and summoned all Englishmen be-
tween the ages of sixteen and sixty, to join his banner. Then,
with his army increasing as he marched along, he went north-
ward, and came so near King Edward, who was in that part of
the country, that Edward had to ride hard for it to the coast of
Norfolk, and thence to get away in such ships as he could find,
to Holland. Thereupon, the triumphant King-Maker and his
false son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, went to London, took
the old King out of the Tower, and walked him in a great pro-
cession to Saint Paul's Cathedral with the crown upon his head.
This did not improve the temper of the Duke of Clarence, who
saw himself farther off from being King than ever ; but he kept
EDWARD THE FOURTH 259
his secret, and said nothing. The Nevil family were restored
to all their honours and glories, and the Woodvilles and the
rest were disgraced. The King-Maker, less sanguinary than
the King, shed no blood except that of the Earl of Worcester,
who had been so cruel to the people as to have gained the title
of the Butcher. Him they caught hidden in a tree, and him
they tried and executed. No other death stained the King-
Maker's triumph.
To dispute this triumph, back came King Edward again,
next year, landing at Ravenspur, coming on to York, causing
all his men to cry " Long live King Henry ! " and swearing on
the altar, without a blush, that he came to lay no claim to the
crown. Now was the time for the Duke of Clarence, who
ordered his men to assume the White Rose, and declare for
his brother. The Marquis of Montague, though the Earl of
Warwick's brother, also declining to fight against King Edward,
he went on successfully to London, where the Archbishop of
York let him into the City, and where the people made great
demonstrations in his favour. For this they had four reasons.
Firstly, there were great numbers of the King's adherents
hiding in the City and ready to break out ; secondly, the King
owed them a great deal of money, which they could never hope
to get if he were unsuccessful ; thirdly, there was a young prince
to inherit the crown ; and fourthly, the King was gay and
handsome, and more popular than a better man might have
been with the City ladies. After a stay of only two days with
these worthy supporters, the King marched out to Barnet
Common, to give the Earl of Warwick battle. And now it
was to be seen, for the last time, whether the King or the King-
Maker was to carry the day.
While the battle was yet pending, the faint-hearted Duke of
Clarence began to repent, and sent over secret messages to his
father-in-law, offering his services in mediation with the King.
But, the Earl of Warwick disdainfully rejected them, and replied
that Clarence was false and perjured, and that he would settle
the quarrel by the sword. The battle began at four o'clock in
the morning and lasted until ten, and during the greater part
of the time it was fought in a thick mist — absurdly supposed to
be raised by a magician. The loss of life was very great, for
26o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the hatred was strong on both sides. The King-Maker was
defeated, and the King triumphed. Both the Earl of Warwick
and his brother were slain, and their bodies lay in St Paul's, for
some days, as a spectacle to the people.
Margaret's spirit was not broken even by this great blow.
Within five days she was in arms again, and raised her standard
in Bath, whence she set off with her army, to try and join Lord
Pembroke, who had a force in Wales. But, the King, coming
up with her outside the town of Tewkesbury, and ordering his
brother, the DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, who was a brave soldier,
to attack her men, she sustained an entire defeat, and was taken
prisoner, together with her son, now only eighteen years of age.
The conduct of the King to this poor youth was worthy of his
cruel character. He ordered him to be led into his tent. " And
what," said he, " brought you to England ? " "I came to
England," replied the prisoner, with a spirit which a man of
spirit might have admired in a captive, " to recover my father's
kingdom, which descended to him as his right, and from him
descends to me, as mine." The King, drawing off his iron
gauntlet, struck him with it in the face ; and the Duke of
Clarence and some other lords, who were there, drew their noble
swords, and killed him.
His mother survived him, a prisoner, for five years; after
her ransom by the King of France, she survived for six years
more. Within three weeks of this murder, Henry died one of
those convenient sudden deaths which were so common in the
Tower ; in plainer words, he was murdered by the King's order.
Having no particular excitement on his hands after this
great defeat of the Lancaster party, and being perhaps desirous
to get rid of some of his fat (for he was now getting too cor-
pulent to be handsome), the King thought of making war on
France. As he wanted more money for this purpose than the
Parliament could give him, though they were usually ready
enough for war, he invented a new way of raising it, by sending
for the principal citizens of London, and telling them, with a
grave face, that he was very much in want of cash, and would
take it very kind in them if they would lend him some. It being
impossible for them safely to refuse, they complied, and the
moneys thus forced from them were called — no doubt to the
EDWARD THE FOURTH
261
THE MURDER OF CLARENCE
great amusement of the King and the Court — as if they were
free gifts, " Benevolences." What with grants from Parliament,
and what with Benevolences, the King raised an army and
passed over to Calais. As nobody wanted war, however, the
French King made proposals of peace, which were accepted,
and a truce was concluded for seven long years. The proceed-
ings between the Kings of France and England on this occasion
were very friendly, very splendid, and very distrustful. They
finished with a meeting between the two Kings, on a temporary
bridge over the river Somme, where they embraced through two
holes in a strong wooden grating like a lion's cage, and made
several bows and fine speeches to one another.
It was time, now, that the Duke of Clarence should be
punished for his treacheries; and Fate had his punishment in
store. He was, probably, not trusted by the King — for who
could trust him who knew him ! — and he had certainly a power-
ful opponent in his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who,
being avaricious and ambitious, wanted to marry that widowed
262 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
daughter of the Earl of Warwick's who had been espoused to
the deceased young Prince, at Calais. Clarence, who wanted
all the family wealth for himself, secreted this lady, whom
Richard found disguised as a servant in the City of London,
and whom he married ; arbitrators appointed by the King, then
divided the property between the brothers. This led to ill-will
and mistrust between them. Clarence's wife dying, and he
wishing to make another marriage which was obnoxious to the
King, his ruin was hurried by that means, too. At first, the
Court struck at his retainers and dependents, and accused some
of them of magic and witchcraft, and similar nonsense. Success-
ful against this small game, it then mounted to the Duke him-
self, who was impeached by his brother the King, in person, on
a variety of such charges. He was found guilty, and sentenced
to be publicly executed. He never was publicly executed, but
he met his death somehow, in the Tower, and, no doubt through
some agency of the King or his brother Gloucester, or both. It
was supposed at the time that he was told to choose the manner
of his death, and that he chose to be drowned in a butt of
Malmsey wine. I hope the story may be true, for it would have
been a becoming death for such a miserable creature.
The King survived him some five years. He died in the
forty-second year of his life, and the twenty-third of his reign.
He had a very good capacity and some good points, but he was
selfish, careless, sensual, and cruel. He was a favourite with
the people for his showy manners ; and the people were a
good example to him in the constancy of their attachment.
He was penitent on his death-bed for his " benevolences," and
other extortions, and ordered restitution to be made to the
people who had suffered from them. He also called about his
bed the enriched members of the Woodville family, and the
proud lords whose honours were of older date, and endeavoured
to reconcile them, for the sake of the peaceful succession of his
son and the tranquillity of England.
EDWARD THE FIFTH
263
CARRIAGE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER XXIV
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH
The late King's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, called Edward
after him, was only thirteen years of age at his father's death.
He was at Ludlow Castle with his uncle, the Earl of Rivers.
The prince's brother, the Duke of York, only eleven years of
age, was in London with his mother. The boldest, most crafty,
and most dreaded nobleman in England at that time was their
uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and everybody wondered
how the two poor boys would fare with such an uncle for a friend
or a foe.
The Queen, their mother, being exceedingly uneasy about
this, was anxious that instructions should be sent to Lord
Rivers to raise an army to escort the young King safely to
London. But, Lord Hastings, who was of the Court party
264 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
opposed to the Woodvilles, and who disliked the thought of
giving them that power, argued against the proposal, and obliged
the Queen to be satisfied with an escort of two thousand horse.
The Duke of Gloucester did nothing, at first, to justify suspicion.
He came from Scotland (where he was commanding an army)
to York, and was there the first to swear allegiance to his
nephew. He then wrote a condoling letter to the Queen-
Mother, and set off to be present at the coronation in London.
Now, the young King, journeying towards London too, with
Lord Rivers and Lord Grey, came to Stony Stratford, as his
uncle came to Northampton, about ten miles distant ; and when
these two lords heard that the Duke of Gloucester was so near,
they proposed to the young King that they should go back and
greet him in his name. The boy being very willing that they
should do so, they rode off and were received with great friend-
liness, "and asked by the Duke of Gloucester to stay and dine
with him. In the evening, while they were merry together, up
came the Duke of Buckingham with three hundred horsemen ;
and next morning the two lords and the two dukes, and the
three hundred horsemen, rode away together to rejoin the King.
Just as they were entering Stony Stratford, the Duke of Glou-
cester, checking his horse, turned suddenly on the two lords,
charged them with alienating from him the affections of his
sweet nephew, and caused them to be arrested by the three
hundred horsemen and taken back. Then, he and the Duke of
Buckingham went straight to the King (whom they had now in
their power), to whom they made a show of kneeling down, and
offering great love and submission ; and then they ordered his
attendants to disperse, and took him, alone with them, to
Northampton.
A few days afterwards they conducted him to London, and
lodged him in the Bishop's Palace. Bnt he did not remain there
long ; for, the Duke of Buckingham with a tender face made a
speech expressing how anxious he was for the Royal boy's
safety, and how much safer he would be in the Tower until his
coronation, than he could be anywhere else. So, to the Tower
he was taken, very carefully, and the Duke of Gloucester was
named Protector of the State.
Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a very
EDWARD THE FIFTH 265
smooth countenance — and although he was a clever man, fair of
speech, and not ill-looking, in spite of one of his shoulders being
something higher than the other — and although he had come
into the City riding bare-headed at the King's side, and looking
very fond of him — he had made the King's mother more uneasy
yet J and when the Royal boy was taken to the Tower, she
became so, alarmed that she took sanctuary in Westminster with
her five daughters.
Nor did she do this without reason, for, the Duke of Glou-
cester, finding that the lords who were opposed to the Woodville
family were faithful to the young King nevertheless, quickly
resolved to strike a blow for himself. Accordingly, while those
lords met in council at the Tower, he and those who were in his
interest met in separate council at his own residence, Crosby
Palace, in Bishopgate Street. Being at last quite prepared, he
one day appeared unexpectedly at the council in the Tower, and
appeared to be very jocular and merry. He was particularly
gay with the Bishop of Ely ; praising the strawberries that grew
in his garden on Holborn Hill, and asking him to have some
gathered that he might eat them at dinner. The Bishop, quite
proud of the honour, sent one of his men to fetch some ; and
the Duke, still very jocular and gay, went out ; and the council
all said what a very agreeable duke he was ! In a little time,
however, he came back quite altered — not at all jocular — frown-
ing and fierce — and suddenly said, —
" What do those persons deserve who have compassed my
destruction ; I being the King's lawful, as well as natural, pro-
tector ? "
To this strange question. Lord Hastings replied, that they
deserved death, whosoever they were.
" Then," said the Duke, " I tell you that they are that sor-
ceress my brother's wife," meaning the Queen ; " and that other
sorceress, Jane Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have withered my
body, and caused my arm to shrink as I now show you."
He then pulled up his sleeve and showed them his arm,
which was shrunken, it is true, but which had been so, as they
all very well knew, from the hour of his birth.
Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord Hastings, as she
had formerly been of the late King, that lord knew that he him-
266 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
self was attacked. So, he said, in some confusion, " Certainly,
my Lord, if they have done this, they be worthy of punish-
ment."
" If? " said the Duke of Gloucester; " do you talk to me of
ifs ? I tell you that they have so done, and I will make it good
upon thy body, thou traitor ! "
With that he struck the table a great blow with his fist.
This was a signal to some of his people outside to cry " Treason ! "
They immediately did so, and there was a rush into the chamber
of so many armed men that it was filled in a moment.
" First," said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hastings, " I
arrest thee, traitor ! And let him," he added to the armed men
who took him, " have a priest at once, for by St Paul I will not
dine until I have seen his head off ! "
Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower chapel,
and there beheaded on a log of wood that happened to be lying
on the ground. Then, the Duke dined with a good appetite,
and after dinner summoning the principal citizens to attend
him, told them that Lord Hastings and the rest had designed
to murder both himself and the Duke of Buckingham, who stood
by his side, if he had not providentially discovered their design.
He requested them to be so obliging as to inform their fellow-
citizens of the truth of what he said, and issued a proclamation
(prepared and neatly copied out beforehand) to the same effect.
On the same day that the Duke did these things in the
Tower, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, the boldest and most undaunted
of his men, went down to Pontefract ; arrested Lord Rivers,
Lord Grey, and two other gentlemen ; and publicly executed
them on the scaffold, without any trial, for having intended the
Duke's death. Three days afterwards the Duke, not to lose
time, went down the river to Westminster in his barge, attended
by divers bishops, lords, and soldiers, and demanded that the
Queen should deliver her second son, the Duke of York, into
his safe keeping. The Queen, being obliged to comply, re-
signed the child after she had wept over him ; and Richard of
Gloucester placed him with his brother in the Tower. Then, he
seized Jane Shore, and, because she had been the lover of the
late King, confiscated her property, and got her sentenced to do
public penance in the streets by walking in a scanty dress, with
EDWARD THE FIFTH 267
bare feet, and carrying a lighted candle, to St Paul's Cathedral,
through the most crowded part of the city.
Having now all things ready for his own aidvancement, he
caused a friar to preach a sermon at the cross which stood in
front of St Paul's Cathedral, in which he dwelt upon the profli-
gate manners of the late King, and upon the late shame of Jane
Shore, and hinted that the princes were not his children.
" Whereas, good people," said the friar, whose name was Shaw,
" my Lord the Protector, the noble Duke of Gloucester, that
sweet prince, the pattern of all the noblest virtues, is the perfect
image and express likeness of his father." There had been
a little plot between the Duke and the friar, that the Duke
should appear in the crowd at this moment, when it was ex-
pected that the people would cry " Long live King Richard ! "
But, either through the friar saying the words too soon, or
through the Duke's coming too late, the Duke and the words
did not come together, and the people only laughed, and the
friar sneaked off ashamed.
The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand at such business
than the friar, so he went to the Guildhall the next day, and
addressed the citizens in the Lord Protector's behalf. A few
dirty men, who had been hired and stationed there for the
purpose, crying when he had done, " God save King Richard ! "
he made them a great bow, and thanked them with all his heart.
Next day, to make an end of it, he went with the mayor and
some lords and citizens to Baynard Castle, by the river, where
Richard then was, and read an address, humbly entreating him
to accept the Crown of England. Richard, who looked down
upon them out of a window and pretended to be in great un-
easiness and alarm, assured them there was nothing he desired
less, and that his deep affection for his nephews forbade him to
think of it. To this the Duke of Buckingham replied, with pre-
tended warmth, that the free people of England would never
submit to his nephew's rule, and that if Richard, who was the
lawful heir, refused the Crown, why then they must find some
one else to wear it. The Duke of Gloucester freturned that
since he used that strong language, it became his painful duty
to think no more of himself, and to accept the Crown.
Upon that, the people cheered and dispersed ; and the Duke
268 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
of Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham passed a pleasant
evening, talking over the play they had just acted with so much
success, and every word of which they had prepared together.
CHAPTER XXV
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD
King Richard the Third was up betimes in the morning,
and went to Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a marble seat,
upon which he sat himself down between two great noblemen,
and told the people that he began the new reign in that place,
because the first duty of a sovereign was to administer the laws
equally to all, and to maintain justice. He then mounted his
horse and rode back to the City, where he was received by the
clergy and the crowd as if he really had a right to the throne,
and really were a just man. The clergy and the crowd must
have been rather ashamed of themselves in secret, I think, for
being such poor-spirited knaves.
The new King and his Queen were soon crowned with a
great deal of show and noise, which the people liked very
much ; and then the King set forth on a royal progress through
his dominions. He was crowned a second time at York, in
order that the people might have show and noise enough ; and
wherever he went was received with shouts of rejoicing — from a
good many people of strong lungs, who were paid to strain their
throats in crying, " God save King Richard ! " The plan was so
successful that I am told it has been imitated since, by other
usurpers, in other progresses through other dominions.
While he was on this journey. King Richard stayed a week
at Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instructions home for
one of the wickedest murders that ever was done — the murder
of the two young princes, his nephews, who were shut up in the
Tower of London.
Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of the
Tower. To him, by the hands of a messenger named JOHN
Green, did King Richard send a letter, ordering him by some
means to put the two young princes to death. But Sir Robert
RICHARD THE THIRD
269
— I hope because he had children of his own, and loved them —
sent John Green back again, riding and spurring along the
dusty roads, with the answer that he could not do so horrible a
piece of work. The King, having frowninfly considered a little,
called to him SiR jAMES Tyrrel, his master of the horse, and
to him gave authority to take command of the Tower, whenever
he would, for twenty-four hours, and to keep all the keys of the
Tower during that space of time. Tyrrel, well knowing what
was wanted, looked about him for two hardened ruffians, and
chose John Dighton, one of his own grooms, and Miles
Forest, who was a murderer by trade. Having secured these
two assistants, he went, upon a day in August, to the Tower,
showed his authority from the King, took the command for
four-and-twenty hours, and obtained possession of the keys.
And when the black night came, he went creeping, creeping
like a guilty villain as he was, up the dark stone winding stairs,
and along the dark stone passages, until he came to the door
of the room where the two young princes, having said their
prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in each other's arms. And
while he watched and listened at the door, he sent in those evil
^^o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
demons, John Dighton and Miles Forest, who smothered the
two princes with the bed and pillows, and carried their bodies
down the stairs, and buried them under a great heap of stones
at the staircase foot. And when the day came, he gave up the
command of the Tower, and restored the keys, and hurried
away without once looking behind him ; and Sir Robert
Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to the princes' room,
and found the princes gone for ever.
You know, through all this history, how true it is that
traitors are never true, and you will not be surprised to learn
that the Duke of Buckingham soon turned against King Richard,
and joined a great conspiracy that was formed to dethrone him,
and to place the crown upon its rightful owner's head. Richard
had meant to keep the murder secret ; but when he heard
through his spies that this conspiracy existed, and that many
lords and gentlemen drank in secret to the healths of the two
young princes in the Tower, he made it known that they were
dead. The conspirators, though thwarted for a moment, soon
resolved to set up for the crown against the murderous Richard,
Henry Earl of Richmond, grandson of Catherine : that widow
of Henry the Fifth, who married Owen Tudor. And as Henry
was of the house of Lancaster, they proposed that he should
marry the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late
King, now the heiress of the house of York, and thus by uniting
the rival families put an end to the fatal wars of the Red and
White Roses. All being settled, a time was appointed for
Henry to come over from Brittany, and for a great rising
against Richard to take place in several parts of England at
the same hour. On a certain day, therefore, in October, the
revolt took place ; but unsuccessfully. Richard was prepared,
Henry was driven back at sea by a storm, his followers in
England were dispersed, and the Duke of Buckingham was
taken, and at once beheaded in the market-place at Salisbury.
The time of his success was a good time, Richard thought^
for summoning a Parliament and getting some money. So, a
Parliament was called, and it flattered and fawned upon him
as much as he could possibly desire, and declared him to be
the rightful King of England, and his only son Edward, then
eleven years of age, the next heir to the throne.
RICHARD THE THIRD 271
Richard knew full well that, let the Parliament say what it
would, the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people as
the heiress of the house of York ; and having accurate infor-
mation besides, of its being designed by the conspirators to
marry^her to Henry of Richmond, he felt that it would much
strengtJien him and weaken them, to be beforehand with them,
and marry her to his son. With this view he went to the
Sanctuary at Westminster, where the late King's widow and
her daughter still were, and besought them to come to Court :
where (he swore by anything and everything) they should be
safely and honourably entertained. They came, accordingly,
but had scarcely been at Court a month when his son died
suddenly — or was poisoned — and his plan was crushed to
pieces.
In this extremity. King Richard, always active, thought,
" I must make another plan." And he made the plan of marry-
ing the Princess Elizabeth himself, although she was his niece.
There was one difficulty in the way : his wife, the Queen Anne,
was alive. But, he knew (remembering his nephews) how to
remove that obstacle, and he made love to the Princess Eliza-
beth, telling her he felt perfectly confident that the Queen
would die in February. The Princess was not a very scrupulous
young lady, for, instead of rejecting the murderer of her brothers
with scorn and hatred, she openly declared that she loved
him dearly ; and, when February came and the Queen did not
die, she expressed her impatient opinion that she was too long
about it. However, King Richard was not so far out in his
prediction, but that she died in March — he took good care of
that — and then this precious pair hoped to be married. But
they were disappointed, for the idea of such a marriage was so
unpopular in the country, that the King's chief counsellors,
Ratcliffe and Catesby, would by no means undertake to
propose it, and the King was even obliged to declare in public
that he had never thought of such a thing.
He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes of
his subjects. His nobles deserted every day to Henry's side ;
he dared not call another Parliament, lest his crimes should be
denounced there; and for want of money, he was obliged to
get Benevolences from the citizens, which exasperated them all
272 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
against him. It was said too, that, being stricken by his con-
science, he dreamed frightful dreams, and started up in the
night-time, wild with terror and remorse. Active to the last,
through all this, he issued vigorous proclamations against
Henry of Richmond and all his followers, when he heard that
they were coming against him with a Fleet from France ; and
took the field as fierce and savage as a wild boar — the animal
represented on his shield.
Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at Mil-
ford Haven, and came on against King Richard, then encamped
at Leicester with an army twice as great, through North Wales.
On Bosworth Field the two armies met ; and Richard, looking
along Henry's ranks, and seeing them crowded with the English
nobles who had abandoned him, turned pale when he beheld
the powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom he had tried
hard to retain) among them. But, he was as brave as he was
wicked, and plunged into the thickest of the fight. He was
riding hither and thither, laying about him in all directions,
when he observed the Earl of Northumberland — one of his few
great allies — to stand inactive, and the main body of his troops
to hesitate. At the same moment, his desperate glance caught
Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights.
Riding hard at him, and crying " Treason ! " he killed his
standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, and aimed
a powerful stroke at Henry himself, to cut him down. But, Sir
William Stanley parried it as it fell, and before Richard could
raise his arm again, he was borne down in a press of numbers,
unhorsed, and killed. Lord Stanley picked up the crown, all
bruised and trampled, and stained with blood, and put it upon
Richmond's head, amid loud and rejoicing cries of " Long live
King Henry ! "
That night, a horse was led up to the church of the Grey
Friars at Leicester ; across whose back was tied, like some worth-
less sack, a naked body brought there for burial. It was the
body of the last of the Plantagenet line. King Richard the Third,
usurper and murderer, slain at the battle of Bosworth Field in
the thirty-second year of his age, after a reign of two yearsi
RICHMOND AT BOSWORTH
s
HENRY THE SEVENTH
'^TS
CHAPTER XXVI
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH
King Henry the Seventh did not turn out to be as fine a
fellow as the nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of their
deliverance from Richard the Third. He was very cold, crafty,
and calculating, and would do almost anything for money. He
possessed considerable ability, but his chief merit appears to
have been that he was not cruel when there was nothing to be
got by it.
The new King had promised the nobles who had espoused
his cause that he would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The
first thing he did, was, to direct her to be removed from the
castle of Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, where Richard had placed
her, and restored to the care of her mother in London. The
young Earl of Warwick, Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of
the late Duke of Clarence, had been kept a prisoner in the same
276 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
old Yorkshire Castle with her. This boy, who was now fifteen,
the new King placed in the Tower for safety. Then he came
to London in great state, and gratified the people with a fine
procession ; on which kind of show he often very much relied
for keeping them in good humour. The sports and feasts
which took place were followed by a terrible fever, called the
Sweating Sickness ; of which great numbers of people died.
Lord Mayors and Aldermen are thought to have suffered most
from it ; whether, because they were in the habit of over-eating
themselves, or because they were very jealous of preserving filth
and nuisances in the City (as they have been since), I don't
know.
The King's coronation was postponed on account of the
general ill-health, and he afterwards deferred his marriage, as
if he were not very anxious that it should take place ; and, even
after that, deferred the Queen's coronation so long that he gave
offence to the York party. However, he set these things right
in the end, by hanging some men and seizing on the rich pos-
sessions of others ; by granting more popular pardons to the
followers of the late King than could, at first, be got from him ;
and, by employing about his Court, some not very scrupulous
persons who had been employed in the previous reign.
As this reign was principally remarkable for two very curious
impostures which have become famous in history, we will make
those two stories its principal feature.
There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, who
had for a pupil a handsome boy named Lambert Simnel, the
son of a baker. Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and
partly to carry out the designs of a secret party formed against
the King, this priest declared that his pupil, the boy, was no
other than the young Earl of Warwick ; who (as everybody
might have known) was safely locked up in the Tower of
London. The priest and the boy went over to Ireland ; and, .
at Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people : who
seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly irrational.
The Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland, declared that he
believed the boy to be what the priest represented ; and the
boy, who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such
things of his childhood, and gave them so many descriptions of
HENRY THE SEVENTH
277
the Royal Family, that they
were perpetually shouting and
hurrahing, and drinking his
health, and making all kinds
of noisy and thirsty demonstra-
tions, to express their belief in
him. Nor was this feeling con-
fined to Ireland alone, for the
Earl of Lincoln — whom the
late usurper had named as his
successor — went over to the
young Pretender; and, after
holding a secret correspondence
with the Dowager Duchess of
Burgundy — the sister of Edward
the Fourth, who detested the
present King and all his race —
sailed to Dublin with two
thousand German soldiers of
her providing. In this promis-
ing state of the boy's fortunes,
he was crowned there, with a
crown taken off the head of a
statue of the Virgin Mary ; and
was then, according to the Irish
custom of those days, carried
home on the shoulders of a
big chieftain possessing a great
deal more strength than sense.
Father Simons, you may be
sure, was mighty busy at the
coronation.
Ten days afterwards, the
Germans, and the Irish, and
the priest, and the boy, and
the Earl of Lincoln, all landed
in Lancashire to invade Eng-
land. The King, who had
good intelligence of their move-
A Lady of 1485
278 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ments, set up his standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers
resorted to him every day ; while the Earl of Lincoln could
gain but very few. With his small force he tried to make
for the town of Newark ; but the King's army getting be-
tween him and that place, he had no choice but to risk a
battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the complete destruc-
tion of the Pretender's forces, one half of whom were killed ;
among them, the Earl himself. The priest and the baker's boy
were taken prisoners. The priest, after confessing the trick,
was shut up in prison, where he afterwards died — suddenly per-
haps. The boy was taken into the King's kitchen and made a
turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the station of one of the
King's falconers ; and so ended this strange imposition.
There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen —
always a restless and busy woman — had had some share in
tutoring the baker's son. The King was very angry with her,
whether or no. He seized upon her property, and shut her up
in a convent at Bermondsey.
One might suppose that the end of this story would have
put the Irish people on their guard ; but they were quite ready
to receive a second impostor, as they had received the first, and
that same troublesome Duchess of Burgundy soon gave them
the opportunity. All of a sudden there appeared at Cork, in a
vessel arriving from Portugal, a young man of excellent abilities,
of very handsome appearance and most winning manners, who
declared himself to be Richard, Duke of York, the second son
of King Edward the Fourth. "O," said some, even of those
ready Irish believers, " but surely that young Prince was murdered
by his uncle in the tower ! " " It is supposed so," said the
engaging young man ; " and my brother was killed in that
gloomy prison ; but I escaped — it don't matter how, at present
— and have been wandering about the world for seven long
years." This explanation being quite satisfactory to numbers
of the Irish people, they began again to shout and to hurrah,
and to drink his health, and to make the noisy and thirsty
demonstrations all over again. And the big chieftain in Dublin
began to look out for another coronation, and another young
King to be carried home on his back.
Now, King Henry being then on bad terms with France, the
HENRY THE SEVENTH 279
French King, Charles the Eighth, saw that, by pretending to
believe in the handsome young man, he could trouble his enemy
sorely. So, he invited him over to the French Court, and
appointed him a body-guard, and treated him in all respects
as if he really were the Duke of York. Peace, however, being
soon concluded between the two Kings, the pretended Duke
was turned adrift, and wandered for protection to the Duchess
of Burgundy. She, after feigning to inquire into the reality of
his claims, declared him to be the very picture of her dear
departed brother ; gave him a body-guard at her Court, of
thirty halberdiers; and called him by the sounding name of
the White Rose of England.
The leading members of the White Rose party in England
sent over an agent, named Sir Robert Clifford, to ascertain
whether the White Rose's claims were good : the King also
sent over his agents to inquire into the Rose's history. The
White Roses declared the young man to be really the Duke of
York ; the King declared him to be Perkin Warbeck, the
son of a merchant of the city of Tournay, who had acquired his
knowledge of England, its language and manners, from the
English merchants who traded in Flanders ; it was also stated
by the Royal agents that he had been in the service of Lady
Brompton, the wife of an exiled English nobleman, and that
the Duchess of Burgundy had caused him to be trained and
taught, expressly for this deception. The King then required
the Archduke Philip — who was the sovereign of Burgundy — to
banish this new Pretender, or to deliver him up ; but, as the
Archduke replied that he could not control the Duchess in her
own land, the King, in revenge, took the market of English
cloth away from Antwerp, and prevented all commercial inter-
course between the two countries.
He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert Clifford
to betray his employers ; and he denouncing several famous
English noblemen as being secretly the friends of Perkin
Warbeck, the King had three of the foremost executed at once.
Whether he pardoned the remainder because they were poor, I
do not know; but it is only too probable that he refused to
pardon one famous nobleman against whom the same Clifford
soon afterwards informed separately, because he was rich. This
^%o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
was no other than Sir William Stanley, who had saved the
King's life at the battle of Bosworth Field. It is very_ doubtful
whether his treason amounted to much more than his having
said, that if he were sure the young man was the Duke of York,
he would not take arms against him. Whatever he had done he
admitted, like an honourable spirit ; and he lost his head for it,
and the covetous King gained all his wealth,
Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years ; but, as the
Flemings began to complain heavily of the loss of their trade
by the stoppage of the Antwerp market on his account, and as
it was not unlikely that they might even go so far as to take his
life, or give him up, he found it necessary to do something.
Accordingly he made a desperate sally, and landed, with only a
few hundred men, on the coast of Deal. But he was soon glad
to get back to the place from whence he came ; for the country
people rose against his followers, killed a great many, and took
a hundred and fifty prisoners : who were all driven to London,
tied together with ropes, like a team of cattle. Every one of
them was hanged on some part or other of the sea-shore ; in order,
that if any more men should come over with Perkin Warbeck,
they might see the bodies as a warning before they landed.
Then the wary King, by making a treaty of commerce with
the Flemings, drove Perkin Warbeck out of that country ; and,
by completely gaining over the Irish to his side, deprived him of
that asylum too. He wandered away to Scotland, and told his
story at that Court. King James the Fourth of Scotland, who
was no friend to King Henry, and had no reason to be (for King
Henry had bribed his Scotch lords to betray him more than
once ; but had never succeeded in his plots), gave him a great
reception, called him his cousin, and gave him in marriage
the Lady Catherine Gordon, a beautiful and charming creature
related to the Royal House of Stuart.
Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pretender,
the King still undermined, and bought, and bribed, and kept his
doings and Perkin Warbeck's story in the dark, when he might,
one would imagine, have rendered the matter clear to all England.
But, for all this bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King's
Court, he could not procure the Pretender to be delivered up to
him. James, though not very particular in many respects, would
HENRY THE SEVENTH
281
THE PILLORY
not betray him ; and the ever-busy Duchess of Burgundy so
provided him with arms, and good soldiers, and with money
besides, that he had soon a little army of fifteen hundred men
of various nations. With these, and aided by the Scottish King
in person, he crossed the border into England, and made a
proclamation to the people, in which he called the King " Henry
Tudor " ; offered large rewards to any who should take or dis-
tress him ; and announced himself as King Richard the Fourth,
come to receive the homage of his faithful subjects. His faithful
subjects, however, cared nothing for him, and hated his faithful
troops : who, being of different nations, quarrelled also among
themselves. Worse than this, if worse were possible, they began
to plunder the country ; upon which the White Rose said, that
he would rather lose his rights, than gain them through the
miseries of the English people. The Scottish King made a jest
of his scruples ; but they and their whole force went back again
without fighting a battle.
The worst consequence of this attempt was, that a rising
took place among the people of Cornwall, who considered them-
282 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
selves too heavily taxed to meet the charges of the expected
war. Stimulated by Flammock, a lawyer, and Joseph, a black-
smith, and joined by Lord Audley and some other country
gentlemen, they marched on all the way to Deptford Bridge,
where they fought a battle with the King's army. They were
defeated — though the Cornish men fought with great bravery —
and the lord was beheaded, and the lawyer and the blacksmith
were hanged, drawn, and quartered. The rest were pardoned.
The King, who believed every man to be as avaricious as himself,
and thought that money could settle anything, allowed them to
make bargains for their liberty with the soldiers who had taken
them.
Perkin Warbeck, doomed to wander up and down, and never
to find rest anywhere — a sad fate : almost a sufficient punish-
ment for an imposture, which he seems in time to have half
believed himself — lost his Scottish refuge through a truce being
made between the two Kings ; and found himself, once more,
without a country before him in which he could lay his head.
But James (always honourable and true to him, alike when he
melted down his plate, and even the great gold chain he had
been used to wear, to pay soldiers in his cause ; and now, when
that cause was lost and hopeless) did not conclude the treaty,
until he had safely departed out of the Scottish dominions. He,
and his beautiful wife, who was faithful to him under all reverses,
and left her state and home to follow his poor fortunes, were put
aboard ship with everything necessary for their comfort and
protection, and sailed for Ireland.
But, the Irish people had had enough of counterfeit Earls of
Warwick and Dukes of York, for one while J and would give
the White Rose no aid. So, the White Rose — encircled by
thorns indeed — resolved to go with his beautiful wife to Corn-
wall as a forlorn resource, and see what might be made of the
Cornish men, who had risen so valiantly a little while before, and
who had fought so bravely at Deptford Bridge.
To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, came Perkin
Warbeck and his wife ; and the lovely lady he shut up for safety
in the Castle of St Michael's Mount, and then marched into
Devonshire at the head of three thousand Cornish men. These
were increased to six thousand by the time of his arrival in
HENRY THE SEVENTH 283
Exeter ; biit, there the people made a stout resistance, and he
went on to Taunton, where he came in sight of the King's army.
The stout Cornish men, although they were few in number, and
badly armed, were so bold, that they never thought of retreat-
ing ; but bravely looked forward to a battle on the morrow.
Unhappily for them, the man who was possessed of so many
engaging qualities, and who attracted so many people to his
side when he had nothing else with which to tempt them, was
not as brave as they. In the night, when the two armies lay
opposite to each other, he mounted a swift horse and fled.
When morning dawned, the poor confiding Cornish men, dis-
covering that they had no leader, surrendered to the King's
power. Some of them were hanged, and the rest were pardoned,
and went miserably home.
Before the King pursued Perkin Warbeck to the sanctuary
of Beaulieu in the New Forest, where it was soon known that
he had taken refuge, he sent a body of horsemen to Saint
Michael's Mount, to seize his wife. She was soon taken, and
brought as a captive before the King. But she was so beautiful,
and so good, and so devoted to the man in whom she believed,
that the King regarded her with compassion, treated her with
great respect, and placed her at Court, near the Queen's person.
And many years after Perkin Warbeck was no more, and when
his strange story had become like a nursery tale, she was called
the White Rose, by the people, in remembrance of her beauty.
The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon surrounded by the
King's men ; and the King, pursuing his usual dark artful
ways, sent pretended friends to Perkin Warbeck to persuade
him to come out and surrender himself This he soon did ; the
King having taken a good look at the man of whom he had
heard so much — from behind a screen — directed him to be well
mounted, and to ride behind him at a little distance, guarded,
but not bound in any way. So they entered London with the
King's favourite show — a procession ; and some of the people
hooted as the Pretender rode slowly through the streets to the
Tower \ but the greater part were quiet, and very curious to see
him. From the Tower, he was taken to the Palace at West-
minster, and there lodged like a gentleman, though closely
watched. He was examined every now and then as to his
284 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
imposture ; but the King was
so secret in all he did, that even
then he gave it a consequence,
which it cannot be supposed to
have in itself deserved.
At last Perkin Warbeck ran
away, and took refuge in another
sanctuary near Richmond in
Surrey. From this he was
again persuaded to deliver him-
self up ; and, being conveyed to
London, he stood in the stocks
for a whole day, outside West-
minster Hall, and there read a
paper purporting to be his full
confession, and relating his his-
tory as the King's agents had
originally described it. He
was then shut up in the Tower
again, in the company of the
Earl of Warwick, who had now
been there for fourteen years :
ever since his removal out of
Yorkshire, except when the
King had had him at Court,
and had shown him to the
people, to prove the imposture
of the Baker's boy. It is but
too probable, when we consider
the crafty character of Henry
the Seventh, that these two
were brought together for a
cruel purpose. A plot was
soon discovered between them
and the keepers, to murder
the Governor, get possession of
the keys, and proclaim Perkin
Warbeck as King Richard the
Fourth. That there was some
A Dandy, Henry VII. Period
HENRY THE SEVENTH 285
such plot, is likely ; that they were tempted into it, is at
least as likely ; that the unfortunate Earl of Warwick — last
male of the Plantagenet line — was too unused to the world,
and too ignorant and simple to know much about it, whatever
it was, is perfectly certain ; and that it was the King's interest
to get rid of him, is no less so. He was beheaded on Tower
Hill, and Perkin Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn.
Such was the end of the pretended Duke of York, whose
shadowy history was made more shadowy — and ever will be —
by the mystery and craft of the King. If he had turned his
great natural advantages to a more honest account, he might
have lived a happy and respected life, even in those days. But
he died upon a gallows at Tyburn, leaving the Scottish lady,
who had loved him so well, kindly protected at the Queen's
Court. After some time she forgot her old loves and troubles,
as many people do with Time's merciful assistance, and married
a Welsh gentleman. Her second husband, SiR MATTHEW
Cradoc, more honest and more happy than her first, lies beside
her in a tomb in the old church of Swansea.
The ill-blood between France and England in this reign,
arose out of the continued plotting of the Duchess of Burgundy,
and disputes respecting the affairs of Brittany. The King
feigned to be very patriotic, indignant, and warlike ; but he
always contrived so as never to make war in reality, and always
to make money. His taxation of the people, on pretence of
war with France, involved, at one time, a very dangerous
insurrection, headed by Sir John Egremont, and a common man
called John a Chambre. But it was subdued by the royal
forces, under the command of the Earl of Surrey- The
knighted John escaped to the Duchess of Burgundy, who was
ever ready to receive any one who gave the King trouble ; and
the plain John was hanged at York, in the midst of a number
of his men, but on a much higher gibbet, as being a greater
traitor. Hung high or hung low, however, hanging is much the
same to the person hung.
Within a year after her marriage, the Queen had given birth
to a son, who was called Prince Arthur, in remembrance of the
old British prince of romance and story ; and who, when all
these events had happened, being then in his fifteenth year, was
286 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
married to Catherine, the daughter of the Spanish monarch,
with great rejoicings and bright prospects ; but in a very few
months he sickened and died. As soon as the King had
recovered from his grief, he thought it a pity that the fortune of
the Spanish Princess, amounting to two hundred thousand
crowns, should go out of the family ; and therefore arranged
that the young widow should marry his second son Henry,
then twelve years of age, when he too should be fifteen. There
were objections to this marriage on the part of the clergy ; but,
as the infallible Pope was gained over, and, as he must be right,
that settled the business for the time. The King's eldest
daughter was provided for, and a long course of disturbance
was considered to be set at rest, by her being married to the
Scottish King.
And now the Queen died. When the King had got over
that grief too, his mind once more reverted to his darling money
for consolation, and he thought of marrying the Dowager Queen
of Naples, who was immensely rich : but, as it turned out not to
be practicable to gain the money, however practicable it might
have been to gain the lady, he gave up the idea. He was not
so fond of her but that he soon proposed to marry the Dowager
Duchess of Savoy ; and, soon afterwards, the widow of the
King of Castile, who was raving mad. But he made a money-
bargain instead, and married neither.
The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other discontented
people to whom she had given refuge, had sheltered Edmund
DE LA Pole (younger brother of that Earl of Lincoln who was
killed at Stoke), now Earl of Suffolk. The King had prevailed
upon him to return to the marriage of Prince Arthur ; but, he
soon afterwards went away again ; and then the King, suspecting
a conspiracy, resorted to his favourite plan of sending him some
treacherous friends, and buying of those scoundrels the secrets
they disclosed or invented. Some arrests and executions took
place in consequence. In the end, the King, on a promise of
not taking his life, obtained possession of the person of Edmund
de la Pole, and shut him up in the Tower.
This was his last enemy. If he had lived much longer he
would have made many more among the people, by the grinding
exaction to which he constantly exposed them, and by the
HENRY THE EIGHTH 287
tyrannical acts of his two prime favourites in all money-raising
matters, Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson. But Death
— the enemy who is not to be bought off or deceived, and on
whom no money, and no treachery, has any effect — presented
himself at this juncture, and ended the King's reign. He died
of the gout, on the twenty-second of April, one thousand five
hundred and nine, in the fifty-third year of his age, after reign-
ing twenty-four years ; and was buried in the beautiful Chapel
of Westminster Abbey, which he had himself founded, and
which still bears his name.
It was in this reign that the great CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS,
on behalf of Spain, discovered what was then called The New
World. Great wonder, interest, and hope of wealth being
awakened in England thereby, the King and the merchants of
London and Bristol fitted out an English expedition for further
discoveries in the New World, and entrusted it to SEBASTIAN
Cabot, of Bristol, the son of a Venetian pilot there. He was
very successful in his voyage, and gained high reputation, both
for himself and England.
CHAPTER XXVn
england under henry the eighth, called bluff
king hal and burly king harry
Part the First
We now come to King Henry the Eighth, whom it has been too
much the fashion to call "Bluff King Hal," and "Burly King
Harry," and other fine names ; but whom I shall take the
liberty to call, plainly, one of the most detestable villains that
ever drew breath. You will be able to judge, long before we
come to the end of his life, whether he deserves the character.
He was just eighteen years of age when he came to the
throne. People said he was handsome then ; but I don't
believe it. He was a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced,
double-chinned, swinish-looking fellow in later life (as we know
from the likenesses of him, painted by the famous Hans
288 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Holbein), and it is not easy to believe that so bad a character
can ever have been veiled under a prepossessing appearance.
He was anxious to make himself popular ; and the people,
who had long disliked the late King, were very willing to
believe that he deserved to be so. He was extremely fond of
show and display, and so were they. Therefore there was great
rejoicing when he married the Princess Catherine, and when
they were both crowned. And the King fought at tournaments
and always came off victorious — for the courtiers took care of
that — and there was a general outcry that he was a wonderful
man. Empson, Dudley, and their supporters were accused of a
variety of crimes they had never committed, instead of the
offences, of which they really had been guilty ; and they were
pilloried, and set upon horses with their faces to the tails, and
knocked about and beheaded, to the satisfaction of the people
and the enrichment of the King.
The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world into trouble,
had mixed himself up in a war on the continent of Europe,
occasioned by the reigning Princes of little quarrelling states
in Italy having at various times married into other Royal
HENRY THE EIGHTH 289
families, and so led to their claiming a share in those petty
Governments. The King, who discovered that he was very
fond of the Pope, sent a herald to the King of France, to
say that he must not make war upon that holy personage,
because he was the father of all Christians. As the French
King did not mind this relationship in the least, and also
refused to admit a claim King Henry made to certain lands
in France, war was declared between the two countries. Not to
perplex this story with an account of the tricks and designs of
all the sovereigns who were engaged in it, it is enough to say
that England made a blundering alliance with Spain, and got
stupidly taken in by that country ; which made its own terms
with France when it could, and left England in the lurch. SiR
Edward Howard, a bold Admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey,
distinguished himself by his bravery against the French in this
business ; but, unfortunately, he was more brave than wise, for,
skimming into the French harbour of Brest with only a few
rowing-boats, he attempted (in revenge for the defeat and
death of SiR Thomas Knyvett, another bold English admiral)
to take some strong French ships, well defended with batteries
of cannon. The upshot was, that he was left on board of one
of them (in consequence of its shooting away from his own
boat), with not more than about a dozen men, and was thrown
into the sea and drowned : though not until he had taken
from his breast his gold chain and gold whistle, which were
the signs of his office, and had cast them into the sea to pre-
vent their being made a boast of by the enemy. After this
defeat — which was a great one, for Sir Edward Howard was
a man of valour and fame — the King took it into his head to
invade France in person ; first executing that dangerous Earl
of Suffolk whom his father had left in the Tower, and appoint-
ing Queen Catherine to the charge of his kingdom in his
absence. He sailed to Calais, where he was joined by MAXI-
MILIAN, Emperor of Germany, who pretended to be his soldier,
and took pay in his service : with a good deal of nonsense of that
sort, flattering enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The
King might be successful enough in sham fights ; but his idea
of real battles chiefly consisted in pitching silken tents of bright
colours that were ignominiously blown down by the wind, and
T
290 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
in making a vast display of gaudy flags and golden curtains.
Fortune, however, favoured him better than he deserved ; for,
after much waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying, gold cur-
taining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French
battle at a place called Guinegate : where they took such an
unaccountable panic, and fled with such swiftness, that it was
ever afterwards called by the English the Battle of Spurs.
Instead of following up his advantage, the King, finding that he
had had enough of real fighting, came home again.
The Scottish King, though nearly related to Henry by
marriage, had taken part against him in this war. The Earl of
Surrey, as the English general, advanced to meet him when he
came out of his own dominions and crossed the river Tweed.
The two armies came up with one another when the Scottish
King had also crossed the river Till, and was encamped upon
the last of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill of Flodden.
Along the plain below it, the English, when the hour of battle
came, advanced. The Scottish army, which had been drawn
up in five great bodies, then came steadily down in perfect
silence. So they, in their turn, advanced to meet the English
army, which came on in one long line ; and they attacked it
with a body of spearmen, under Lord Home. At first they
had the best of it; but the English recovered themselves so
bravely, and fought with such valour, that, when the Scottish
King had almost made his way up to the Royal Standard,
he was slain, and the whole Scottish power routed. Ten
thousand Scottish men lay dead that day on Flodden Field ;
and among them, numbers of the nobility and gentry. For a
long time afterwards, the Scottish peasantry used to believe
that their King had not been really killed in this battle, because
no Englishman had found an iron belt he wore about his body
as a penance for having been an unnatural and undutiful son.
But, whatever became of his belt, the English had his sword
and dagger, and the ring from his finger, and his body too,
covered with wounds. There is no doubt of it ; for it was seen
and recognised by English gentlemen who had known the
Scottish King well.
When King Henry was making ready to renew the war in
France, the French King was contemplating peace. His queen.
HENRY THE EIGHTH 291
dying at this time, he proposed, though he was upwards of fifty
years old, to marry King Henry's sister, the Princess Mary,
who, besides being only sixteen, was betrothed to the Duke
of Suffolk. As the inclinations of young Princesses were not
much considered in such matters, the marriage was concluded,
and the poor girl was escorted to France, where she was
immediately left as the French King's bride, with only one of
all her English attendants. That one was a pretty young girl
named Anne Boleyn, niece of the Earl of Surrey, who had
been made Duke of Norfolk after the victory of Flodden Field.
Anne Boleyn's is a name to be remembered, as you will pre-
sently find.
And now the French King, who was very proud of his young
wife, was preparing for many years of happiness, and she was
looking forward, I dare say, to many years of misery, when he
died within three months, and left her a young widow. The
new French monarch, FRANCIS THE FIRST, seeing how im-
portant it was to his interests that she should take for her
second husband no one but an Englishman, advised her first
lover, the Duke of Suffolk, when King Henry sent him over
to France to fetch her home, to marry her. The Princess being
herself so fond of that Duke, as to tell him that he must either
do so then, or for ever lose her, they were wedded ; and Henry
afterwards forgave them. In making interest with the King,
the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his most powerful favourite
and adviser, THOMAS WOLSEY — a name very famous in history
for its rise and downfall.
Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ipswich,
in Suffolk, and received so excellent an education that he
became a tutor to the family of the Marquis of Dorset, who
afterwards got him appointed one of the late King's chaplains.
On the accession of Henry the Eighth, he was promoted and
taken into great favour. He was now Archbishop of York ;
the Pope had made him a Cardinal besides ; and whoever
wanted influence in England or favour with the King — whether
he were a foreign monarch or an English nobleman — was
obliged to make a friend of the great Cardinal Wolsey.
He was a gay man, who could dance and jest, and sing and
drink ; and those were the roads to so much, or rather so little
292 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
of a heart as King Henry had. He was wonderfully fond of
pomp and glitter, and so was the King. He knew a good deal
of the Church learning of that time ; much of which consisted
in finding artful excuses and pretences for almost any wrong
thing, and in arguing that black was white, or any other colour.
This kind of learning pleased the King too. For many such
reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation with the King;
and, being a man of far greater ability, knew as well how to
manage him, as a clever keeper may know how to manage a
wolf or a tiger, or any other cruel and uncertain beast, that may
turn upon him and tear him any day. Never had there been
seen in England such state as my Lord Cardinal kept. His
wealth was enormous ; equal, it was reckoned, to the riches of
the Crown. His palaces were as splendid as the King's, and his
retinue was eight hundred strong. He held his Court, dressed
out from top to toe in flaming scarlet ; and his very shoes were
golden, set with precious stones. His followers rode on blood
horses ; while he, with a wonderful affectation of humility in the
midst of his great splendour, ambled on a mule with a red velvet
saddle and bridle and golden stirrups.
Through the influence of this stately priest, a grand meeting
was arranged to take place between the French and English
Kings in France ; but on ground belonging to England. A
prodigious show of friendship and rejoicing was to be made on
the occasion ; and heralds were sent to proclaim with brazen
trumpets through all the principal cities of Europe, that, on a
certain day, the Kings of France and England, as companions
and brothers in arms, each attended by eighteen followers, would
hold a tournament against all knights who might choose to come.
Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old one being
dead), wanted to prevent too cordial an alliance between these
sovereigns, and came over to England before the King could
repair to the place of meeting ; and, besides making an agree-
able impression upon him, secured Wolsey's interest by promising
that his influence should make him Pope when the next vacancy
occurred. On the day when the Emperor left England, the King
and all the Court went over to Calais, and thence to the place
of meeting, between Ardres and Guisnes, commonly called the
Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of expense and
HENRY THE EIGHTH 293
prodigality was lavished on the decorations of the show ;
many of the knights and gentlemen being so superbly dressed
that it was said they carried their whole estates upon their
shoulders.
There were sham castles, temporary chapels, fountains
running wine, great cellars full of wine free as water to all
comers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and such things
without end J and, in the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-
shone and out-glittered all the noblemen and gentlemen as-
sembled. After a treaty made between the two Kings with
as much solemnity as if they had intended to keep it, the lists
— nine hundred feet long, and three hundred and twenty broad
— were opened for the tournament ; the Queens of France and
England looking on with great array of lords and ladies. Then,
for ten days, the two sovereigns fought five combats every day,
and always beat their polite adversaries ; though they do write
that the King of England, being thrown in a wrestle one day
by the King of France, lost his kingly temper with his brother
in arms, and wanted to make a quarrel of it. Then there is a
great story belonging to this Field of the Cloth of Gold, show-
ing how the English were distrustful of the French, and the
French of the English, until Francis rode alone one morning to
Henry's tent ; and, going in before he was out of bed, told him
in joke that he was his prisoner ; and how Henry jumped out
of bed and embraced Francis ; and how Francis helped Henry
to dress, and warmed his linen for him ; and how Henry gave
Francis a splendid jewelled collar, and how Francis gave Henry,
in return, a costly bracelet. All this and a great deal more was
so written about, and sung about, and talked about at that time
(and, indeed, since that time too), that the world has had good
cause to be sick of it, for ever.
Of course, nothing came of all these fine doings but a
speedy renewal of the war between England and France, in
which the two Royal companions and brothers in arms longed
very earnestly to damage one another. But, before it broke
out again, the Duke of Buckingham was shamefully executed
on Tower Hill, on the evidence of a discharged servant — really
for nothing, except the folly of having believed in a friar of the
name of HOPKINS, who had pretended to be a prophet, and who
294 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
had mumbled and jumbled out some nonsense about the Duke's
son being destined to be very great in the land. It was believed
that the unfortunate Duke had given offence to the great Cardinal
by expressing his mind freely about the expense and absurdity
of the whole business of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At any
rate, he was beheaded, as I have said, for nothing. And the
people who saw it done were very angry, and cried out that it
was the work of " the butcher's son ! "
The new war was a short one, though the Earl of Surrey
invaded France again, and did some injury to that country. It
ended in another treaty of peace between the two kingdoms,
and in the discovery that the Emperor of Germany was not
such a good friend to England in reality, as he pretended to be.
Neither did he keep his promise to Wolsey to make him Pope,
though the King urged him. Two Popes died in pretty quick suc-
cession ; but the foreign priests were too much for the Cardinal,
and kept him out of the post. So the Cardinal and King
together found out that the Emperor of Germany was not
a man to keep faith with ; broke off a projected marriage
between the King's daughter MARY, Princess of Wales, and
that sovereign ; and began to consider whether it might not
be well to marry the young lady, either to Francis himself,
or to his eldest son.
There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, the great
leader of the mighty change in England which is called
the Reformation, and which set the people free from their
slavery to the priests. This was a learned Doctor, named
Martin 1 CTHER, who knew all about them, for he had been
a priest, and even a monk, himself. The preaching and writing
of Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking on this subject ;
and Luther, finding one day to his great surprise, that there
really was a book called the New Testament which the priests
did not allow to be read, and which contained truths that they
suppressed, began to be very vigorous against the whole body,
from the Pope downward. It happened, while he was yet only
beginning his vast work of awakening the nation, that an im-
pudent fellow named Tetzel, a friar of very bad character,
came into his neighbourhood selling what were called Indul-
gences, by wholesale, to raise money for beautifying the great
HENRY THE EIGHTH
295
CHAINED BIBLES IN THE CHURCHES
Cathedral of St Peter's, at Rome. Whoever bought an
Indulgence of the Pope was supposed to buy himself off from
the punishment of Heaven for his offences. Luther told the
people that these Indulgences were worthless bits of paper
before God, and that Tetzel and his masters were a crew of
impostors in selling them.
The King and the Cardinal were mightily indignant at this
presumption ; and the King (with the help of Sir Thomas
More, a wise man, whom he afterwards repaid by striking off
his head) even wrote a book about it, with which the Pope was
so well pleased that he gave the King the title of Defender of
the Faith. The King and the Cardinal also issued flaming
warnings to the people not to read Luther's books, on pain of
excommunication. But they did read them for all that ; and
the rumour of what was in them spread far and wide.
When this great change was thus going on, the King began
to show himself in his truest and worst colours. Anne Boleyn,
the pretty little girl who had gone abroad to France with his
sister, was by this time grown up to be very beautiful, and was
296 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
one of the ladies in attendance on Queen Catherine. Now,
Queen Catherine was no longer young or handsome, and it is
likely that she was not particularly good-tempered; having
been always rather melancholy, and having been made more so
by the deaths of four of her children when they were very
young. So, the King fell in love with the fair Anne Boleyn,
and said to himself, " How can I be best rid of my own trouble-
some wife whom I am tired of, and marry Anne ? "
You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife of
Henry's brother. What does the King do, after thinking it
over, but calls his favourite priests about him, and says, O ! his
mind is in such a dreadful state, and he is so frightfully uneasy,
because he is afraid it was not lawful for him to marry the
Queen ! Not one of those priests had the courage to hint that
it was rather curious he had never thought of that before, and
that his mind seemed to have been in a tolerably jolly condition
during a great many years, in which he certainly had not fretted
himself thin ; but they all said, Ah ! that was very true, and it
was a serious business ; and perhaps the best way to make it
right, would be for his Majesty to be divorced ! The King
replied. Yes, he thought that would be the best way, certainly ;
so they all went to work.
If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that took
place in the endeavour to get this divorce, you would think the
History of England the most tiresome book in the world. So I
shall say no more, than that after a vast deal of negotiation and
evasion, the Pope issued a commission to Cardinal Wolsey and
Cardinal Campeggio (whom he sent over from Italy for the
purpose), to try the whole case in England. It is supposed —
and I think with reason — that Wolsey was the Queen's enemy,
because she had reproved him for his proud and gorgeous
manner of life. But he did not at first know that the King
wanted to marry Anne Boleyn ; and when he did know it, he
even went down on his knees, in the endeavour to dissuade him.
The Cardinals opened their court in the Convent of the
Black Friars, near to where the bridge of that name in London
now stands ; and the King and Queen, that they might be near
it, took up their lodgings at the adjoining palace of Bridewell,
of which nothing now remains but a bad prison, On the
HENRY THE EIGHTH 297
opening of the court, when the King and Queen were called on
to appear, that poor, ill-used lady, with a dignity and firmness,
and yet with a womanly affection worthy to be always admired,
went and kneeled at the King's feet, and said that she had
come, a stranger, to his dominions ; that she had been a good
and true wife to him for twenty years ; and that she could
acknowledge no power in those Cardinals to try whether she
should be considered his wife after all that time, or should be
put away. With that, she got up and left the court, and would
never afterwards come back to it.
The King pretended to be very much overcome, and said,
O ! my lords and gentlemen, what a good woman she was to be
sure, and how delighted he would be to live with her unto
death, but for that terrible uneasiness in his mind which was
quite wearing him away ! So the case went on, and there was
nothing but talk for two months. Then Cardinal Campeggio,
who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted nothing so much as
delay, adjourned it for two more ; and before that time was
elapsed, the Pope himself adjourned it indefinitely, by requiring
the King and Queen to come to Rome and have it tried there.
But by good luck for the King, word was brought to him by
some of his people, that they had happened to meet at supper
Thomas Cranmer, a learned Doctor of Cambridge, who had
proposed to urge the Pope on, by referring the case to all the
learned doctors and bishops, here and there and everywhere,
and getting their opinions that the King's marriage was un-
lawful. The King, who was now in a hurry to marry Anne
Boleyn, thought this such a good idea, that he sent for
Cranmer, post haste, and said to Lord Rochfort, Anne
Boleyn's father, "Take this learned Doctor down to your
country-house, and there let him have a good room for a study,
and no end of books out of which to prove that I may marry
your daughter." Lord Rochfort, not at all reluctant, made the
learned Doctor as comfortable as he could ; and the learned
Doctor went to work to prove his case. All this time, the King
and Anne Boleyn were writing letters to one another almost
daily, full of impatience to have the case settled ; and Anne
Boleyn was showing herself (as I think) very worthy of the fate
which afterwards befel her.
298 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had left Cranmer to
render this help. It was worse for him that he had tried to
dissuade the King from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a
servant as he, to such a master as Henry, would probably have
fallen in any case ; but, between the hatred of the party of the
Queen that was, and the hatred of the party of the Queen that
was to be, he fell suddenly and heavily. Going down one day
to the Court of Chancery, where he now presided, he was waited
upon by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who told him that
they brought an order to him to resign that office, and to with-
draw quietly to a house he had at Esher, in Surrey. The
Cardinal refusing, they rode off to the King ; and next day
came back with a letter from him, on reading which, the Cardinal
submitted. An inventory was made out of all the riches in his
palace at York Place (now Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully
up the river, in his barge, to Putney. An abject man he was, in
spite of his pride ; for being overtaken, riding out of that place
towards Esher, by one of the King's chamberlains who brought
him a kind message and a ring, he alighted from his mule, took
off his cap, and kneeled down in the dirt. His poor Fool, whom
in his prosperous days he had always kept in his palace to
entertain him, cut a far better figure than he; for, when the
Cardinal said to the chamberlain that he had nothing to send
to his lord the King as a present, but that jester who was a
most excellent one, it took six strong yeomen to remove the
faithful fool from his master.
The once proud Cardinal was soon further disgraced, and
wrote the most abject letters to his vile sovereign, who humbled
him one day and encouraged him the next, according to his
humour, until he was at last ordered to go and reside in his
diocese of York. He said he was too poor ; but I don't know
how he made that out, for he took a hundred and sixty servants
with him, and seventy-two cart loads of furniture, food, and wine.
He remained in that part of the country for the best part of a
year, and showed himself so improved by his misfortunes, and
was so mild and so conciliating, that he won all hearts. And
indeed, even in his proud days, he had done some magnificent
things for learning and education. At last, he was arrested for
high treason ; and coming slowly on his journey towards London,
THE ARREST OF CARDINAL WOLSEY
HENRY THE EIGHTH
301
got as far as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester Abbey after dark,
and very ill, he said — when the monks came out at the gates
with lighted torches to receive him — that he had come to lay
his bones among them. He had indeed ; for he was taken to a
bed from which he never rose again. His last words were,
" Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the King,
He would not have given me over, in my grey hairs. Howbeit,
this is my just reward for my pains and diligence, not regarding
my service to God, but only my duty to my prince." The news
of his death was quickly carried to the King, who was amusing
himself with archery in the garden of the magnificent Palace at
Hampton Court, which that very Wolsey had presented to him.
The greatest emotion his royal mind displayed at the loss of a
servant so faithful and so ruined, was a particular desire to lay
hold of fifteen hundred pounds which the Cardinal was reported
to have hidden somewhere.
The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned doctors
and bishops and others, being at last collected, and being gener-
ally in the King's favour, were forwarded to the Pope, with an
entreaty that he would now grant it. The unfortunate Pope,
who was a timid man, was half distracted between his fear of
his authority being set aside in England if he did not do as he
was asked, and his dread of offending the Emperor of Germany,
who was Queen Catherine's nephew. In this state of mind he
still evaded and did nothing Then, THOMAS CROMWELL, who
had been one of Wolsey's faithful attendants, and had remained
so even in his decline, advised the King to take the matter into
his own hands, and make himself the head of the whole Church.
This, the King, by various artful means, began to do ; but he
recompensed the clergy by allowing them to burn as many
people as they pleased, for holding Luther's opinions. You
must understand that Sir Thomas More, the wise man who had
helped the King with his book, had been made Chancellor in
Wolsey's place. But, as he was truly attached to the Church as
it was even in its abuses, he, in this state of things, resigned.
Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine,
and to marry Anne Boleyn without more ado, the King
made Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, and directed Queen
Catherine to leave the Court. She obeyed ; but replied that
302 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
wherever she went, she was Queen of England still, and would
remain so.till the last. The King then married Anne Boleyn
privately ; and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, within half
a year, declared his marriage with Queen Catherine void, and
crowned Anne Boleyn Queen.
She might have known that no good could ever come from
such a wrong, and that the corpulent brute who had been so
faithless and so cruel to his first wife, could be more faithless
and more cruel to his second. She might have known that,
even when he was in love with her, he had been a mean and
selfish coward, running away, like a frightened cur, from her
society and her house, when a dangerous sickness broke out in
it, and when she might easily have taken it and died, as several
of the household did. But Anne Boleyn arrived at all this
knowledge too late, and bought it at a dear price. Her bad
marriage with a worse man came to its natural end. Its natural
end was not, as we shall too soon see, a natural death for her.
CHAPTER XXVIII
england under henry the eighth
Part the Second
The Pope was thrown into a very angry state of mind when he
heard of the King's marriage, and fumed exceedingly. Many
of the English monks and friars, seeing that their order was in
danger, did the same ; some even declaimed against the King
in church before his face, and were not to be stopped until he
himself roared out " Silence ! " The King, not much the worse
for this, took it pretty quietly ; and was very glad when his
Queen gave birth to a daughter, who was christened ELIZABETH,
and declared Princess of Wales as her sister Mary had already
been.
One of the most atrocious features of this reign was that
Henry the Eighth was always trimming between the reformed
religion and the unreformed one ; so that the more he quarrelled
with the Pope, the more of his own subjects he roasted alive for
HENRY THE EIGHTH
3°3
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ismm Bot-iVK.
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not holding the Pope's opinions. Thus, an unfortunate student
named John Frith, and a poor simple tailor named Andrew
Hewet, who loved him very much, and said whatever John Frith
believed ke believed, were burnt in Smithfield — to show what a
capital Christian the King was.
But these were speedily followed by two much greater
victims. Sir Thomas More, and John Fisher, the Bishop of
Rochester. The latter, who was a good and amiable old man,
had committed no greater offence than believing in Elizabeth
Barton, called the Maid of Kent — another of those ridiculous
women who pretended to be inspired, and to make all sorts of
heavenly revelations, though they indeed uttered nothing but
evil nonsense. For this offence — as it was pretended, but really
for denying the King to be the supreme Head of the Church —
he got into trouble, and was put in prison ; but, even then, he
might have been suffered to die naturally (short work having
been made of executing the Kentish Maid and her principal
followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King, resolved to
make him a cardinal. Upon that, the King made a ferocious joke
to the effect that the Pope might send Fisher a red hat — which is
304 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
the way they make a cardinal — but he should have no head on
which to wear it; and he was tried with all unfairness and
injustice, and sentenced to death. He died like a noble and
virtuous old man, and left a worthy name behind him. The
King supposed, I dare say, that Sir Thomas More would be
frightened by this example ; but, as he was not to be easily
terrified, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope, had made up his
mind that the King was not the rightful Head of the Church, he
positively refused to say that he was. For this crime he too
was tried and sentenced, after having been in prison a whole
year. When he was doomed to death, and came away from his
trial with the edge of the executioner's axe turned towards him —
as was always done in those times when a state prisoner came to
that hopeless pass — he bore it quite serenely, and gave his
blessing to his son, who pressed through the crowd in West-
minster Hall and kneeled down to receive it. But when he got
to the Tower Wharf on his way back to his prison, and his
favourite daughter, MARGARET ROPER, a very good woman,
rushed through the guards again and again, to kiss him and to
weep upon his neck, he was overcome at last. He soon recovered,
and never more showed any feeling but cheerfulness and
courage. When he was going up the steps of the scaffold to his
death, he said jokingly to the Lieutenant of the Tower, observ-
ing that they were weak and shook beneath his tread, " I pray
you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up ; and, for my coming
down, I can shift for myself" Also he said to the executioner,
after he had laid his head upon the block, " Let me put my
beard out of the way ; for that, at least, has never committed
any treason." Then his head was struck off at a blow. These
two executions were worthy of King Henry the Eighth. Sir
Thomas More was one of the most virtuous men in his
dominions, and the Bishop was one of his oldest and truest
friends. But to be a friend of that fellow was almost as
dangerous as to be his wife.
When the news of these two murders got to Rome, the Pope
raged against the murderer more than ever Pope raged since the
world began, and prepared a Bull, ordering his subjects to take
arms against him and dethrone him. The King took all possible
precautions to keep that document out of his dominions, and set
HENRY THE EIGHTH 305
to work in return to suppress a great number of the English
monasteries and abbeys.
This destruction was begun by a body of commissioners, of
whom Cromwell (whom the King had taken into great favour)
was the head ; and was carried on through some few years to
its entire completion. There is no doubt that many of these
religious establishments were religious in nothing but in name,
and were crammed with lazy, indolent, and sensual monks.
There is no doubt that they imposed upon the people in every
possible way ; that they had images moved by wires, which they
pretended were miraculously moved by Heaven ; that they had
among them a whole tun measure full of teeth, all purporting to
have come out of the head of one saint, who must indeed have
been a very extraordinary person with that enormous allowance
of grinders ; that they had bits of coal which they said had fried
Saint Lawrence, and bits of toe-nails which they said belonged to
other famous saints ; penknives, and boots, and girdles, which
they said belonged to others ; and that all these bits of rubbish
were called Relics, and adored by the ignorant people. But, on
the other hand, there is no doubt either, that the King's officers
and men punished the good monks with the bad ; did great
injustice ; demolished many beautiful things and many valu-
able libraries ; destroyed numbers of paintings, stained glass
windows, fine pavements, and carvings ; and that the whole court
were ravenously greedy and rapacious for the division of this great
spoil among them. The King seems to have grown almost
mad in the ardour of this pursuit ; for he declared Thomas k
Becket a traitor, though he had been dead so many years, and
had his body, dug up out of his grave. He must have been as
miraculous as the monks pretended, if they had told the truth,
for he was found with one head on his shoulders, and they had
shown another as his undoubted and genuine head ever since
his death ; it had brought them vast sums of money, too. The
gold and jewels on his shrine filled two great chests, and eight
men tottered as they carried them away. How rich the
monasteries were you may infer from the fact that, when they
were all suppressed, one hundred and thirty thousand pounds
a year — in those days an immense sum — came to the Crown.
These things were not done without causing great discontent
U
3o6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
among the people. The monks had been good landlords and
hospitable entertainers of all travellers, and had been accustomed
to give away a great deal of corn, and fruit, and meat, and other
things. In those days it was difficult to change goods into
money, in consequence of the roads being very few and very
bad, and the carts and waggons of the worst description ; and
they must either have given away some of the good things they
possessed in enormous quantities, or have suffered them to spoil
and moulder. So many of the people missed what it was more
agreeable to get idly than to work for ; and the monks who
were driven out of their homes and wandered about encouraged
their discontent ; and there were, consequently, great risings in
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. These were put down by terrific
executions, from which the monks themselves did not escape,
and the King went on grunting and growling in his own fat
way, like a Royal pig.
I have told all this story of the religious houses at one time,
to make it plainer, and to get back to the King's domestic
aifairs.
The unfortunate Queen Catherine was by this time dead ;
and the King was by this time as tired of his second Queen as
he had been of his first. As he had fallen in love with Anne
when she was in the service of Catherine, so he now fell in love
with another lady in the service of Anne. See how wicked
deeds are punished, and how bitterly and self-reproachfully the
Queen must now have thought of her own rise to the throne !
The new fancy was a Lady Jane Seymour ; and the King no
sooner set his mind on her, than he resolved to have Anne
Boleyn's head. So he brought a number of charges against
Anne, accusing her of dreadful crimes which she had never
committed, and implicating in them her own brother and certain
gentlemen in her service : among whom one Norris, and Mark
Smeaton a musician, are best remembered. As the lords and
councillors were as afraid of the King and as subservient to him
as the meanest peasant in England was, they brought in Anne
Boleyn guilty, and the other unfortunate persons accused with
her guilty too. Those gentlemen died like men, with the
exception of Smeaton, who had been tempted by the King into
telling lies, which he called confessions, and who had expected
HENRY THE EIGHTH
307
to be pardoned; but who, I
am very glad to say, was not.
There was then only the Queen
to dispose of. She had been
surrounded in the Tower with
women spies ; had been mon-
strously persecuted and foully
slandered ; and had received no
justice. But her spirit rose
with her afflictions ; and, after
having, in vain tried to soften
the King by writing an affecting
letter to him which still exists,
" from her doleful prison in the
Tower," she resigned herself to
death. She said to those about
her, very cheerfully, that she had
heard say the executioner was
a good one, and that she had
a little neck (she laughed and
clasped it with her hands as she
said that), and would soon be
out of her pain. And she was
soon out of her pain, poor
creature, on the Green inside
the Tower, and her body was
flung into an old box and put
away in the ground under the
chapel.
There is a story that the
King sat in his palace listening
very anxiously for the sound
of the cannon which was to
announce this new murder ; and
that, when he heard it come
booming on the air, he rose up
in great spirits and ordered out
his dogs to go a-hunting. He
was bad enough to do it; but
Guard of Hbnry VIII.
3o8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
whether he did it or not, it is certain that he married Jane
Seymour the very next day.
I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived just
long enough to give birth to a son who was christened EDWARD,
and then to die of a fever: for, I cannot but think that any
woman who married such a ruffian, and knew what innocent
blood was on his hands, deserved the axe that would assuredly
have fallen on the neck of Jane Seymour, if she had lived much
longer.
Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the Church
property for purposes of religion and education ; but the great
families had been so hungry to get hold of it, that very little
could be rescued for such objects. Even MILES COVERDALE,
who did the people the inestimable service of translating the
Bible into English (which the unreformed religion never per-
mitted to be done), was left in poverty while the great families
clutched the Church lands and money. The people had been
told that when the Crown came into possession of these funds,
it would not be necessary to tax them ; but they were taxed
afresh directly afterwards. It was fortunate for them, indeed,
that so many nobles were so greedy for this wealth ; since, if it
had remained with the Crown, there might have been no end to
tyranny for hundreds of years. One of the most active writers
on the Church's side against the King was a member of his own
family — a sort of distant cousin, REGINALD Pole by name —
who attacked him in the most violent manner (though he
received a pension from him all the time), and fought for the
Church with his pen, day and night. As he was beyond the
King's reach — being in Italy — the King politely invited him
over to discuss the subject ; but he, knowing better than to
come, and wisely staying where he was, the King's rage fell
upon his brother Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, and
some other gentlemen: who were tried for high treason in
corresponding with him and aiding him — which they probably
did — and were all executed. The Pope made Reginald Pole a
cardinal ; but, so much against his will, that it is thought he
even aspired in his own mind to the vacant throne of England,
and had hopes of marrying the Princess Mary. His being
made a high priest, however, put an end to all that. His
HENRY THE EIGHTH 309
mother, the venerable Countess of Salisbury — who was, un-
fortunately for herself, within the tyrant's reach — was the last
of his relatives on whom his wrath fell. When she was told to
lay her grey head upon the block, she answered the executioner,
" No ! My head never committed treason, and if you want it,
you shall seize it." So, she ran round and round the scaffold
with the executioner striking at her, and her grey hair bedabbled
with blood ; and even when they held her down upon the block
she moved her head about to the last, resolved to be no party
to her own barbarous murder. All this the people bore, as
they had borne everything else.
Indeed they bore much more ; for the slow fires of Smith-
field were continually burning, and people were constantly
being roasted to death — still to show what a good Christian the
King was. He defied the Pope and his Bull, which was now
issued, and had come into England ; but he burned innumer-
able people whose only offence was that they differed from the
Pope's religious opinions. There was a wretched man named
Lambert, among others, who was tried for this before the
King, and with whom six bishops argued one after another.
When he was quite exhausted (as well he might be, after six
bishops), he threw himself on the King's mercy ; but the King
blustered out that he had no mercy for heretics. So /te too fed
the fire.
All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. The
national spirit seems to have been banished from the kingdom
at this time. The very people who were executed for treason,
the very wives and friends of the " bluff" King, spoke of him on
the scaffold as a good prince, and a gentle prince — ^just as serfs
in similar circumstances have been known to do, under the
Sultan and Bashaws of the East, or under the fierce old tyrants
of Russia, who poured boiling and freezing water on them
alternately, until they died. The Parliament were as bad as
the rest, and gave the King whatever he wanted ; among other
vile accommodations, they gave him new powers of murdering,
at his will and pleasure, anyone whom he might choose to call
a traitor. But the worst measure they passed was an Act of
Six Articles, commonly called at the time " the whip with six
strings," which punished offences against the Pope's opinions
310 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
without mercy, and enforced the very worst parts of the
monkish religion. Cranmer would have modified it, if he could ;
but, being overborne by the Romish party, had not the power.
As one of the articles declared that priests should not marry,
and as he was married himself, he sent his wife and children
into Germany, and began to tremble at his danger ; none the
less because he was, and had long been, the King's friend.
This whip of six strings was made under the King's own eye.
It should never be forgotten of him how cruelly he supported
the worst of the Popish doctrines when there was nothing to be
got by opposing them.
This amiable monarch now thought of taking another wife.
He proposed to the French King to have some of the ladies of
the French Court exhibited before him, that he might make his
Royal choice ; but the French King answered that he would
rather not have his ladies trotted out to be shown like horses at
a fair. He proposed to the Dowager Duchess of Milan, who
replied that she might have thought of such a match if she had
had two heads; but, that only owning one, she must beg to
keep it safe. At last Cromwell represented that there was a
Protestant Princess in Germany — those who held the reformed
religion were called Protestants, because their leaders had Pro-
tested against the abuses and impositions of the unreformed
Church — named Anne OF Cleves, who was beautiful, and
would answer the purpose admirably. The King said was she
a large woman, because he must have a fat wife ? " O yes,"
said Cromwell ; " she was very large, just the thing." On hear-
ing this the King sent over his famous painter, Hans Holbein,
to take her portrait. Hans made her out be so good-looking
that the King was satisfied, and the marriage was arranged. But,
whether anybody had paid Hans to touch up the picture ; or
whether Hans, like one or two other painters, flattered, a
princess in the ordinary way of business, I cannot say : all I
know is, that when Anne came over and the King went to
Rochester to meet her, and first saw her without her seeing
him, he swore she was "' a great Flanders mare," and said he
would never marry her. Being obliged to do it now matters
had gone so far, he would not give her the presents he had
prepared, and would never notice her. He never forgave
HENRY THE EIGHTH 311
Cromwell his part in the affair. His downfall dates from that
time.
It was quickened by his enemies, in the interests of the
unreformed religion, putting in the King's way, at a state
dinner, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Catherine Howard,
a young lady of fascinating manners, though small in stature
and not particularly beautiful. Falling in love with her on the
spot, the King soon divorced Anne of Cleves after making her
the subject of much brutal talk, on pretence that she had been
previously betrothed to someone else — which would never do
for one of his dignity — and married Catherine. It is probable
that on his wedding day, of all days in the year, he sent his
faithful Cromwell to the scaffold, and had his head struck off.
He further celebrated the occasion by burning at one time,
and causing to be drawn to the fire on the same hurdles, some
Protestant prisoners for denying the Pope's doctrines, and some
Roman Catholic prisoners for denying his own supremacy. Still
the people bore it, and not a gentleman in England raised his
hand.
But, by a just retribution, it soon came out that Catherine
Howard, before her marriage, had been really guilty of such
crimes as the King had falsely attributed to his second wife
Anne Boleyn; so, again the dreadful axe made the King a
widower, and this Queen passed away as so many in that reign
had passed away before her. As an appropriate pursuit under
the circumstances, Henry then applied himself to superintending
the composition of a religious book called " A necessary doc-
trine for any Christian Man." He must have been a little
confused in his mind, I think, at about this period ; for he was
so false to himself as to be true to someone : that someone being
Cranmer, whom the Duke of Norfolk and others of his enemies
tried to ruin ; but to whom the King was steadfast, and to
whom he one night gave his ring, charging him when he should
find himself, next day, accused of treason, to show it to the
council board. This Cranmer did to the confusion of his
enemies. I suppose the King thought he might want him a
little longer.
He married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he found
in England another woman who would become his wife, and
312 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
she was Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer. She
leaned towards the reformed religion ; and it is some comfort
to know, that she tormented the King considerably by arguing
a variety of doctrinal points with him on all possible occasions.
She had very nearly done this to her own destruction. After
one of these conversations, the King in a very black mood
actually instructed GARDINER, one of his Bishops who favoured
the Popish opinions, to draw up a bill of accusation against her,
which would have inevitably brought her to the scaffold where
her predecessors had died, but that one of her friends picked up
the paper of instructions which had been dropped in the palace,
and gave her timely notice. She fell ill with terror; but
managed the King so well when he came to entrap her into
further statements — by saying that she had only spoken on
such points to divert his mind and to get some information
from his extraordinary wisdom — that he gave her a kiss and
called her his sweetheart. And, when the Chancellor came
next day actually to take her to the Tower, the King sent him
about his business, and honoured him with the epithets of a
beast, a knave, and a fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the
block, and so narrow was her escape !
There was war with Scotland in this reign, and a short
clumsy war with France for favouring Scotland ; but the events
at home were so dreadful, and leave such an enduring stain
on the country, that I need say no more of what happened
abroad.
A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There was a
lady, Anne Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the Pro-
testant opinions, and whose husband being a fierce Catholic,
turned her out of his house. She came to London, and was
considered as offending against the six articles, and was taken
to the Tower, and put upon the rack — probably because it was
hoped that she might, in her agony, criminate some obnoxious
persons ; if falsely, so much the better. She was tortured with-
out uttering a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would
suffer his men to torture her no more ; and then two priests
who were present actually pulled off their robes, and turned the
wheels of the rack with their own hands, so rending and twisting
and breaking her that she was afterwards carried to the fire in
EDWARD THE SIXTH 313
a chair. She was burned with three others, a gentleman, a
clergyman, and a tailor ; and so the world went on.
Either the King became afraid of the power of the Duke of
Norfolk, and his son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave him some
olfence, but he resolved to pull them down, to follow all the rest
who were gone. The son was tried first — of course for nothing
— and defended himself bravely ; but of course he was found
guilty, and of course he was executed. Then his father was laid
hold of, and left for death too.
But the King himself was left for death by a Greater King,
and the earth was to be rid of him at last. He was now a
swollen, hideous spectacle, with a great hole in his leg, and so
odious to every sense that it was dreadful to approach him.
When he was found to be dying, Cranmer was sent for from his
palace at Croydon, and came with all speed, but found him
speechless. Happily, in that hour he perished. He was in the
fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign.
Henry the Eighth has been favoured by some Protestant
writers, because the reformation was achieved in his time. But
the mighty merit of it lies with other men and not with him ;
and it can be rendered none the worse by this monster's crimes,
and none the better by any defence of them. The plain truth
is, that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human
nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the History of
England.
CHAPTER XXIX
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH
Henry the Eighth had made a will, appointing a council of
sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son while he was under
age (he was now only ten years old), and another council of
twelve to help them. The most powerful of the first council
was the EARL OF HERTFORD, the young King's uncle, who lost
no time in bringing his nephew with great state up to Enfield,
and thence to the Tower. It was considered at the time a
striking proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry for
314 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
his father's death ; but, as common subjects have that virtue too,
sometimes, we will say no more about it.
There was a curious part of the late King's will, requiring
his executors to fulfil whatever promises he had made. Some
of the Court wondering what these might be, the Earl of Hert-
ford and the other noblemen interested, said that they were
promises to advance and enrich them. So the Earl of Hertford
made himself Duke of Somerset, and made his brother
Edward Seymour a baron ; and there were various similar
promotions, all very agreeable to the parties concerned, and
very dutiful, no doubt, to the late King's memory. To be more
dutiful still, they made themselves rich out of the Church lands,
and were very comfortable. The new Duke of Somerset caused
himself to be declared PROTECTOR of the kingdom, and was,
indeed, the King.
As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the
principles of the Protestant religion, everybody knew that they
would be maintained. But Cranmer, to whom they were chiefly
entrusted, advanced them steadily and temperately. Many
EDWARD THE SIXTH 315
superstitious and ridiculous practices were stopped ; but prac-
tices which were harmless were not interfered with.
The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was anxious to have
the young King engaged in marriage to the young Queen of
Scotland, in order to prevent that princess from making an
alliance with any foreign power ; but, as a large party in Scot-
land were unfavourable to this plan, he invaded that country.
His excuse for doing so was, that the Border men — that is, the
Scotch who lived in that part of the country where England and
Scotland joined — troubled the English very much. But there
were two sides to this question ; for the English Border men
troubled the Scotch too ; and, through many long years, there
were perpetual border quarrels which gave rise to numbers of
old tales and songs. However, the Protector invaded Scotland ;
and Arran, the Scottish Regent, with an army twice as large
as his, advanced to meet him. They encountered on the banks
of the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh ; and there,
after a little skirmish, the Protector made such moderate pro-
posals, in offering to retire if the Scotch would only engage not
to mari-y their princess to any foreign prince, that the Regent
thought the English were afraid. But in this he made a horrible
mistake; for the English soldiers on land, and the English
sailors on the water, so set upon the Scotch, that they broke and
fled, and more than ten thousand of them were killed. It was a
dreadful battle, for the fugitives were slain without mercy. The
ground" for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was strewn
with dead men, and with arms, and legs, and heads. Some hid
themselves in streams and were drowned ; some threw away
their armour and were killed running, almost naked ; but in this
battle of Pinkey the English lost only two or three hundred
men. They were much better clothed than the Scotch ; at the
poverty of whose appearance and country they were exceedingly
astonished.
A Parliament was called when Somerset came back, and it
repealed the whip with six strings, and did one or two other
good things ; though it unhappily retained the punishment of
burning for those people who did not make believe to believe,
in all religious matters, what the Government had declared
that they must and should believe. It also made a foolish law
3i6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
(meant to put down beggars), that any man who lived idly and
loitered about for three days together, should be burned with a
hot iron, made a slave, and wear an iron fetter. But this savage
absurdity soon came to an end, and went the way of a great
many other foolish laws.
The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parliament
before all the nobles, on the right hand of the throne. Many
other noblemen, who only wanted to be as proud if they could
get a chance, became his enemies of course ; and it is supposed
that he came back suddenly from Scotland because he had
received news that his brother, Lord Seymour, was becoming
dangerous to him. This lord was now High Admiral of Eng-
land ; a very handsome man, and a great favourite with the
Court ladies — even with the young Princess Elizabeth, who
romped with him a little more than young princesses in these
times do with any one. He had married Catherine Parr, the
late King's widow, who was now dead ; and, to strengthen his
power, he secretly supplied the young King with money. He
may even have engaged with some of his brother's enemies in a
plot to carry the boy off. On these and other accusations, at
any rate, he was confined in the Tower, impeached, and found
guilty; his own brother's name being — unnatural and sad to
tell — the first signed to the warrant for his execution. He was
executed on Tower Hill, and died denying his treason. One of
his last proceedings in this world was to write two letters, one
to the Princess Elizabeth, and one to the Princess Mary, which
a servant of his took charge of, and concealed in his shoe.
These letters are supposed to have urged them against his
brother, and to revenge his death. What they truly contained
is not known ; but there is no doubt that he had, at one time,
obtained great influence ever the Princess Elizabeth.
All this while, the Protestant religion was making progress.
The images which the people had gradually come to worship,
were removed from the churches ; the people were informed
that they need not confess themselves to priests unless they
chose ; a common prayer-book was drawn up in the English
language, which all could understand ; and many other improve-
ments were made ; still moderately. For Cranmer was a very
moderate man, and even restrained the Protestant clergy from
EDWARD THE SIXTH 317
violently abusing the unreformed religion — as they very often
did, and which was not a good example. But the people were
at this time in great distress. The rapacious nobility who had
come into possession of the Church lands, were very bad land-
lords. They enclosed great quantities of ground for the feeding
of sheep, which was then more profitable than the growing of
crops ; and this increased the general distress. So the people,
who still understood little of what was going on about them, and
still readily believed what the homeless monks told them — many
of whom had been their good friends in their better days — took
it into their heads, that all this was owing to the reformed
religion, and therefore rose in many parts of the country.
The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and Norfolk.
In Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that ten thousand
men united within a few days, and even laid siege to Exeter.
But Lord Russell, coming to the assistance of the citizens
who defended that town, defeated the rebels; and, not only
hanged the Mayor of one place, but hanged the vicar of another
from his own church steeple. What with hanging and killing
by the sword, four thousand of the rebels are supposed to have
fallen in that one county. In Norfolk (where the rising was
more against the enclosure of open lands than against the
reformed religion), the popular leader was a man named ROBERT
Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, in the first
instance, excited against the tanner by one JOHN Flowerdew,
a gentleman who owed him a grudge : but the tanner was more
than a match for the gentleman, since he soon got the people
on his side, and established himself near Norwich with quite an
army. There was a large oak-tree in that place, on a spot called
Moushold Hill, which Ket named the Tree of Reformation ; and
under its green boughs, he and his men sat, in the midsummer
weather, holding courts of justice, and debating affairs of state.
They were even impartial enough to allow some rather tiresome
public speakers to get up into this Tree of Reformation, and
point out their errors to them, in long discourses, while they lay
listening (not always without some grumbling and growling) in
the shade below. At last, one sunny July day, a herald appeared
below the tree, and proclaimed Ket and all his men traitors,
unless from that moment they dispersed and went home; in
31 8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
which case they were to receive a pardon. But Ket and his
men made light of the herald and became stronger than ever ;
until the Earl of Warwick went after them with a sufficient
force, and cut them all to pieces. A few were hanged, drawn,
and quartered, as traitors, and their limbs were sent into various
country places to be a terror to the people. Nine of them were
hanged upon nine green branches of the Oak of Reformation ;
and so, for the time, that tree may be said to have withered
away.
The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion for
the real distresses of the common people, and a sincere desire to
help them. But he was too proud and too high in degree to
hold even their favour steadily ; and many of the nobles always
envied and hated him, because they were as proud and not as
high as he. He was at this time building a great Palace in the
Strand ; to get the stone for which he blew up church steeples
with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops' houses : thus making
himself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the
Earl of Warwick — Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley
who had made himself so odious with Empson, in the reign of
Henry the Seventh — ^joined with seven other members of the
Council against him, formed a separate Council ; and, becoming
stronger in a few days, sent him to the Tower under twenty -nine
articles of accusation. After being sentenced by the Council to
the forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was liberated and
pardoned, on making a very humble submission. He was even
taken back into the Council again, after having suffered this fall,
and married his daughter. Lady Anne Seymour, to Warwick's
eldest son. But such a reconciliation was little likely to last,
and did not outlive a year. Warwick, having got himself made
Duke of Northumberland, and having advanced the more im-
portant of his friends, then finished the history by causing the
Duke of Somerset and his friend Lord Grey, and others, to be
arrested for treason, in having conspired to seize and dethrone
the King. They were also accused of having intended to seize
the new Duke of Northumberland, with his friends LORD
Northampton and Lord Pembroke ; to murder them if they
found need ; and to raise the City to revolt. All this the fallen
Protector positively denied ; except that he confessed to having
KET THE TANNER ADDRESSING HIS FOLLOWERS
EDWARD THE SIXTH 321
spoken of the murder of those three noblemen, but having never
designed it. He was acquitted of the charge of treason, and
found guilty of the other charges ; so when the people — who
remembered his having been their friend, now that he was
disgraced and in danger, saw him come out from his trial with
the axe turned from him — they thought he was altogether
acquitted, and set up a loud shout of joy.
But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on
Tower Hill, at eight o'clock in the morning, and proclamations
were issued bidding the citizens keep at home until after ten.
They filled the streets, however, and crowded the place of
execution as soon as it was light ; and, with sad faces and sad
hearts, saw the once powerful Protector ascend the scaffold to
lay his head upon the dreadful block. While he was yet saying
his last words to them with manly courage, and telling them, in
particular, how it comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted
in reforming the national religion, a member of the Council was
seen riding up on horseback. They again thought that the
Duke was saved by his bringing a reprieve, and again shouted
for joy. But the Duke himself told them they were mistaken,
and laid down his head and had it struck off at a blow.
Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped their
handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affection. He had,
indeed, been capable of many good acts, and one of them was
discovered after he was no more. The Bishop of Durham, a
very good man, had been informed against to the Council, when
the Duke was in power, as having answered a treacherous letter
proposing a rebellion against the reformed religion. As the
answer could not be found, he could not be declared guilty ; but
it was now discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among some
private papers, in his regard for that good man. The Bishop
lost his office, and was deprived of his possessions.
It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle lay in
prison under sentence of death, the young King was being vastly
entertained by plays, and dances, and sham fights : but there is
no doubt of it, for he kept a journal himself It is pleasanter to
know that not a single Roman Catholic was burnt in this reign
for holding that religion ; though two wretched victims suffered
for heresy. One, a woman named JOAN BOCHER, for professing
X
322 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
some opinions that even she could only explain in unintelligible
jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named VON Paris, who
practised as a surgeon in London. Edward was, to his credit,
exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant for the woman's
execution : shedding tears before he did so, and telling Cranmer,
who urged him to do it (though Cranmer really would have
spared the woman at first, but for her own determined obstinacy),
that the guilt was not his, but that of the man who so strongly
urged the dreadful act. We shall see, too soon, whether the
time ever came when Cranmer is likely to have remembered this
with sorrow and remorse.
Cranmer and Ridley (at first Bishop of Rochester, and
afterwards Bishop of London) were the most powerful of the
clergy of this reign. Others were imprisoned and deprived of
their property for still adhering to the unreformed religion ; the
most important of whom were Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester,
Heath, Bishop of Worcester, Day, Bishop of Chichester, and
Bonner, that Bishop of London who was superseded by Ridley.
The Princess Mary, who inherited her mother's gloomy temper,
and hated the Reformed religion as connected with her mother's
wrongs and sorrows — she knew nothing else about it, always
refusing to read a single book in which it was truly described —
held by the unreformed religion too, and was the only person in
the kingdom for whom the old Mass was allowed to be per-
formed ; nor would the young King have made that exception
even in her favour, but for the strong persuasions of Cranmer
and Ridley. He always viewed it with horror ; and when he
fell into a sickly condition, after having been very ill, first of the
measles and then of the small- pox, he was greatly troubled in
mind to think that if he died, and she, the next heir to the
throne, succeeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be set
up again.
This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was not slow
to encourage : for, if the Princess Mary came to the throne, he,
who had taken part with the Protestants, was sure to be dis-
graced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk was descended from King
Henry the Seventh ; and, if she resigned what little or no right
she had, in favour of her daughter Lady Jane Grey, that would
be the succession to promote the Duke's greatness ; because
MARY 323
Lord Guilford Dudley, one of his sons, was, at this very
time, newly married to her. So, he worked upon the King's
fears, and persuaded him to set aside both the Princess Mary
and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert his right to appoint his
successor. Accordingly the young King handed to the Crown
lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times over by himself,
appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to the Crown, and
requiring them to have his will made out according to law.
They were much against it at first, and told the King so ; but
the Duke of Northumberland — being so violent about it that the
lawyers even expected him to beat them, and hotly declaring
that, stripped to his shirt, he would fight any man in such a
quarrel — they yielded. Cranmer, also, at first hesitated ; plead-
ing that he had sworn to maintain the succession of the Crown
to the Princess Mary ; but, he was a weak man in his resolu-
tions, and afterwards signed the document with the rest of the
council.
It was completed none too soon ; for Edward was now sink-
ing in a rapid decline ; and, by way of making him better, they
handed him over to a woman-doctor who pretended to be able
to cure it. He speedily got worse. On the sixth of July, in the
year one thousand five hundred and fifty-three, he died, very
peaceably and piously, praying God, with his last breath, to
protect the reformed religion.
The King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in the
seventh of his reign. It is difficult to judge what the character
of one so young might afterwards have become among so many
bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles. But, he was an amiable
boy, of very good abilities, and had nothing coarse or cruel or
brutal in his disposition — which in the son of such a father is
rather surprising.
CHAPTER XXX
ENGLAND UNDER MARY
The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to keep the
young King's death a secret, in order that he might get the two
324 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Princesses into his power. But, the Princess Mary, being in-
formed of that event as she was on her way to London to see
her sick brother, turned her horse's head, and rode away into
Norfolk. The Earl of Arundel was her friend, and it was he
who sent her warning of what had happened.
As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northumberland
and the council sent for the Lord Mayor of London and some of
the aldermen, and made a merit of telling it to them. Then
they made it known to the people, and set off to inform Lady
Jane Grey that she was to be Queen.
She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable,
learned, and clever. When the lords who came to her, fell
on their knees before her, and told her what tidings they
brought, she was so astonished that she fainted. On recovering,
she expressed her sorrow for the young King's death, and said
that she knew she was unfit to govern the kingdom ; but that if
she must be Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was
then at Sion House, near Brentford ; and the lords took her
down the river in state to the Tower, that she might remain
there (as the custom was) until she was crowned. But the
MARY 325
people were not at all favourable to Lady Jane, considering
that the right to be Queen was Mary's, and greatly disliking
the Duke of Northumberland. They were not put into a better
humour by the Duke's causing a vinter's servant, one Gabriel
Pot, to be taken up for expressing his dissatisfaction among the
crowd, and to have his ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off.
Some powerful men among the nobility declared on Mary's side.
They raised troops to support her cause, had her proclaimed
Queen at Norwich, and gathered around her at the castle of
Framlingham, which belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. For,
she was not considered so safe as yet, but that it was best to
keep her in a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she might be
sent abroad, if necessary.
The Council would have despatched Lady Jane's father, the
Duke of Suffolk, as the general of the army against this force ; but,
as Lady Jane implored that her father might remain with her,
and as he was known to be but a weak man, they told the Duke
of Northumberland that he must take the command himself. He
was not very ready to do so, as he mistrusted the Council much;
but there was no help for it, and he set forth with a heavy heart,
observing to a lord who rode beside him through Shoreditch at
the head of the troops, that although the people pressed in great
numbers to look at them, they were terribly silent.
And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded.
While he was waiting at Cambridge for further help from the
Council, the Council took it into their heads to turn their backs
on Lady Jane's cause, and to take up the Princess Mary's. This
was chiefly owing to the before-mentioned Earl of Arundel, who
represented to the Lord Mayor and aldermen, in a second inter-
view with those sagacious persons, that, as for himself, he did
not perceive the Reformed religion to be in much danger —
which Lord Pembroke backed by flourishing his sword as
another kind of persuasion. The Lord Mayor and aldermen,
thus enlightened, said there could be no doubt that the Princess
Mary ought to be Queen. So, she was proclaimed at the Cross
by St Paul's, and barrels of wine were given to the people, and
they got very drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires — little
thinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would soon be
blazing in Queen Mary's name.
326 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
THE TORTURE OF THE BOOT
After a ten days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey resigned
the Crown with great willingness, saying that she had only
accepted it in obedience to her father and mother; and went
gladly back to her pleasant house by the river, and her books.
Mary then came on towards London ; and at Wanstead in
Essex, was joined by her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth.
They passed through the streets of London to the Tower, and
there the new Queen met some eminent prisoners then confined
in it, kissed them, and gave them their liberty. Among these
was that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had been im-
prisoned in the last reign for holding to the unreformed religion.
Him she soon made chancellor.
The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, and,
together with his son and five others, was quickly brought before
the Council. He, not unnaturally, asked that Council, in his
defence, whether it was treason to obey orders that had been
issued under the great seal ; and, if it were, whether they, who
had obeyed them too, ought to be his judges ? But they made
MARY 327
light of these points ; and, being resolved to have him out of
the way, soon sentenced him to death. He had risen into power
upon the death of another man, and made but a poor show (as
might be expected) when he himself lay low. He entreated
Gardiner to let him live, if it were only in a mouse's hole ; and,
when he ascended the scaffold to be beheaded on Tower Hill,
addressed the people in a miserable way, saying that he had
been incited by others, and exhorting them to return to the
unreformed religion, which he told them was his faith. There
seems reason to suppose that he expected a pardon even then,
in return for this confession ; but it matters little whether he did
or not. His head was struck off.
Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven years
of age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and very unhealthy.
But she had a great liking for show and for bright colours, and
all the ladies of her Court were magnificently dressed. She had
a great liking too for old customs, without much sense in them ;
and she was oiled in the oldest way, and blessed in the oldest
way, and done all manner of things to in the oldest way, at her
coronation. I hope they did her good.
She soon began to show her desire to put down the Re-
formed religion, and put up the unreformed one : though it was
dangerous work as yet, the people being something wiser than
they used to be. They even cast a shower of stones — and
among them a dagger — at one of the royal chaplains who
attacked the Reformed religion in a public sermon. But the
Queen and her priests went steadily on. Ridley, the powerful
bishop of the last reign, was seized and sent to the Tower.
Latimer, also celebrated among the Clergy of the last reign,
was likewise sent to the Tower, and Cranmer speedily followed.
Latimer was an aged man ; and, as his guards took him
through Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, " This is a
place that hath long groaned for me." For he knew well what
kind of bonfires would soon be burning. Nor was the know-
ledge confined to him. The prisons were fast filled with the
chief Protestants, who were there left rotting in darkness,
hunger, dirt, and separation from their friends ; many, who had
time left them for escape, fled from the kingdom ; and the
dullest of the people began, now, to see what was coming.
328 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
It came on fast. A Parliament was got together; not
without strong suspicion of unfairness ; and they annulled the
divorce, formerly pronounced by Cranmer between the Queen's
mother and King Henry the Eighth, and unmade all the laws
on the subject of religion that had been made in the last King
Edward's reign. They began their proceedings, in violation
of the law, by having the old mass said before them in Latin,
and by turning out a bishop who would not kneel down. They
also declared guilty of treason. Lady Jane Grey for aspiring
to the Crown ; her husband, for being her husband ; and Cran-
mer, for not believing in the mass aforesaid. They then prayed
the Queen graciously to choose a husband for herself, as soon
as might be.
Now, the question who should be the Queen's husband had
given rise to a great deal of discussion, and to several contend-
ing parties. Some said Cardinal Pole was the man — but the
Queen was of opinion that he was not the man, he being too
old and too much of a student. Others said that the gallant
young COURTENAY, whom the Queen had made Earl of Devon-
shire, was the man — and the Queen thought so too, for a while ;
but she changed her mind. At last it appeared that PHILIP,
Prince of Spain, was certainly the man — though certainly
not the people's man ; for they detested the idea of such a
marriage from the beginning to the end, and murmured that
the Spaniard would establish in England, by the aid of foreign
soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even the
terrible Inquisition itself
These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying
young Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and setting them
up, with popular tumults all over the kingdom, against the
Queen. This was discovered in time by Gardiner ; but in
Kent, the old bold county, the people rose in their old bold
way. Sir Thomas Wyat, a man of great daring, was their
leader. He raised his standard at Maidstone, marched on to
Rochester, established himself in the old castle there, and
prepared to hold out against the Duke of Norfolk, who came
against him with a party of the Queen's guards, and a body
of five hundred London men. The London men, however,
were all for Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They declared,
MARY 329
under the castle walls, for Wyat ; the Duke retreated, and
Wyat came on to Deptford, at the head of fifteen thousand
men.
But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to South-
wark, there were only two thousand left. Not dismayed by
finding the London citizens in arms, and the guns at the Tower
ready to oppose his crossing the river there, Wyat led them off
to Kingston-upon-Thames, intending to cross the bridge that
he knew to be in that place, and so to work his way round
to Ludgate, one of the old gates of the City. He found the
bridge broken down, but mended it, came across, and bravely
fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. Finding the
gate closed against him, he fought his way back again, sword
in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being overpowered, he sur-
rendered himself, and three or four hundred of his men were
taken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a moment of weak-
ness (and perhaps of torture) was afterwards made to accuse
the Princess Elizabeth as his accomplice to some very small
extent. But his manhood soon returned to him, and he refused
to save his life by making any more false confessions. He was
quartered and distributed in the usual brutal way, and from
fifty to a hundred of his followers were hanged. The rest were
led out, with halters round their necks, to be pardoned, and
to make a parade of crying out, " God save Queen Mary ! "
In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself
to be a woman of courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat
to any place of safety, and went down to the Guildhall, sceptre
in hand, and made a gallant speech to the Lord Mayor and
citizens. But on the day after Wyat's defeat, she did the most
cruel act, even of her cruel reign, in signing the warrant for the
execution of Lady Jane Grey.
They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed
religion ; but she steadily refused. On the morning when she
was to die, she saw from her window the bleeding and headless
body of her husband brought back in a cart from the scaffold
on Tower Hill where he had laid down his life. But, as she
had declined to see him before his execution, lest she should
be overpowered and not make a good end, so, she even now
showed a constancy and calmness that will never be forgotten.
330 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
She came up to the scaffold with a firm step and a quiet face,
and addressed the bystanders in a steady voice. They were
not numerous ; for she was too young, too innocent and fair,
to be murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as her husband
had just been ; so, the place of her execution was within the
Tower itself She said that she had done an unlawful act in
taking what was Queen Mary's right ; but that she had done
so with no bad intent, and that she died a humble Christian.
She begged the executioner to despatch her quickly, and she
asked him, " Will you take my head off before I lay me down ? "
He answered, " No, Madam," and then she was very quiet while
they bandaged her eyes. Being blinded, and unable to see the
block on which she was to lay her young head, she was seen to
feel about for it with her hands, and was heard to say, con-
fused, " O what shall I do ! Where is it ? " Then they guided
her to the right place, and the executioner struck off her head.
You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds the executioner
did in England, through many many years, and how his axe
descended on the hateful block through the necks of some of
the bravest, wisest, and best in the land. But it never struck so
cruel and so vile a blow as this.
The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little pitied.
Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth, and this
was pursued with great eagerness. Five hundred men were sent
to her retired house at Ashridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders
to bring her up, alive or dead. They got there at ten at night,
when she was sick in bed. But, their leaders followed her lady
into her bedchamber, whence she was brought out betimes next
morning, and put into a litter to be conveyed to London. She
was so weak and ill, that she was five days on the road ; still,
she was so resolved to be seen by the people that she had the
curtains of the litter opened ; and so, very pale and sickly,
passed through the streets. She wrote to her sister, saying she
was innocent of any crime, and asking why she was made a
prisoner ; but she got no answer, and was ordered to the Tower.
They took her in by the Traitor's Gate, to which she objected,
but in vain. One of the lords who conveyed her offered to cover
her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she put it away from
her, proudly and scornfully, and passed into the Tower, and sat
MARY
33^
BISHOP HOOPER
down in a court-yard on a stone. They besought her to come
in out of the wet ; but she answered that it was better sitting
there, than in a worse place. At length she went to her apart-
ment, where she was kept a prisoner, though not so close a
prisoner as at Woodstock, whither she was afterwards removed,
and where she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid whom
she heard singing in the sunshine as she went through the green
fields. Gardiner, than whom there were not many worse men
among the fierce and sullen priests, cared little to keep secret
his stern desire for her death : being used to say that it was of
little service to shake off the leaves, and lop the branches of the
tree of heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were left. He
failed, however, in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, at
length, released ; and Hatfield House was assigned to her as a
residence, under the care of one SiR Thomas Pope.
It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main
cause of this change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He was not an
amiable man, being, on the contrary, proud, overbearing, and
gloomy ; but he and the Spanish lords who came over with him,
33^ A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
assuredly did discountenance the idea of doing any violence to
the Princess. It may have been mere prudence, but we will hope
it was manhood and honour. The Queen had been expecting
her husband with great impatience, and at length he came, to
her great joy, though he never cared much for her. They were
married by Gardiner, at Winchester, and there was more holiday-
making among the people ; but they had their old distrust of
this Spanish marriage, in which even the Parliament shared.
Though the members of that Parliament were far from honest,
and were strongly suspected to have been bought with Spanish
money, they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to set
aside the Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own successor.
Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the
darker one of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, he went on
at a great pace in the revival of the unreformed religion. A new
Parliament was packed, in which there were no Protestants.
Preparations were made to receive Cardinal Pole in England as
the Pope's messenger, bringing his holy declaration that all the
nobility who had acquired Church property, should keep it —
which was done to enlist their selfish interest on the Pope's side.
Then a great scene was enacted, which was the triumph of the
Queen's plans. Cardinal Pole arrived in great splendour and
dignity, and was received with great pomp. The Parliament
joined in a petition expressive of their sorrow at the change in
the national religion, and praying him to receive the country
again into the Popish Church. With the Queen sitting on the
throne, and the King on one side of her, and the Cardinal on
the other, and the Parliament present, Gardiner read the petition
aloud. The Cardinal then made a great speech, and was so
obliging as to say that all was forgotten and forgiven, and that
the kingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.
Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible
bonfires. The Queen having declared to the Council, in writing,
that she would wish none of her subjects to be burnt without
some of the Council being present, and that she would par-
ticularly wish there to be good sermons at all burnings, the
Council knew pretty well what was to be done next. So, after
the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as a preface to the
burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner opened a High Court at
ELIZABETH AT TRAITOR'S GATE
MARY
335
Saint Mary Overy, on the Southwark side of London Bridge,
for the trial of heretics. Here, two of the late Protestant clergy-
men, Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and Rogers, a Prebendary
of St Paul's, were brought to be tried. Hooper was tried first
for being married, though a priest, and for not believing in the
mass. He admitted both of these accusations, and said that the
mass was a wicked imposition. Then they tried Rogers, who
said the same. Next morning the two were brought up to be
sentenced; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, being a
German woman and a stranger in the land, he hoped might be
allowed to come to speak to him before he died. To this the
inhuman Gardiner replied, that she was not his wife. " Yea, but
she is, my lord," said Rogers, " and she hath been my wife these
eighteen years." His request was still refused, and they were
both sent to Newgate ; all those who stood in the streets to sell
things, being ordered to put out their lights that the people
might not see them. But, the people stood at their doors with
candles in their hands, and prayed for them as they went by.
Soon afterwards, Rogers was taken out of jail to be burnt in
Smithfield ; and, in the crowd as he went along, he saw his poor
wife and his ten children, of whom the youngest was a little
baby. And so he was burnt to death.
The next day. Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester,
was brought out to take his last journey, and was made to wear
a hood over his face that he might not be known by the people.
But, they did know him for all that, down in his own part of the
country ; and, when he came near Gloucester, they lined the
road, making prayers and lamentations. His guards took him
to a lodging, where he slept soundly all night. At nine o'clock
next morning, he was brought forth leaning on a staff; for he
had taken cold in prison, and was infirm. The iron stake, and
the iron chain which was to bind him to it, were fixed up near
a great elm-tree in a pleasant open place before the cathedral,
where, on peaceful Sundays, he had been accustomed to preach
and to pray, when he was bishop of Gloucester. This tree,
which had no leaves then, it being February, was filled with
people; and the priests of Gloucester College were looking
complacently on from a window, and there was a great con-
course of spectators in every spot from which a glimpse of the
336 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
dreadful sight could be beheld. When the old man kneeled
down on the small platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed
aloud, the nearest people were observed to be so attentive to his
prayers that they were ordered to stand further back ; for it did
not suit the Romish Church to have those Protestant words
heard. His prayers concluded, he went up to the stake and
was stripped to his shirt, and chained ready for the fire. One
of his guards had such compassion on him that, to shorten his
agonies, he tied some packets of gunpowder about him. Then
they heaped up wood and straw and reeds, and set them all
alight. But, unhappily, the wood was green and damp, and
there was a wind blowing that blew what flame there was, away.
Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, the good old man was
scorched and roasted and smoked, as the fire rose and sank ;
and all that time they saw him, as he burned, moving his lips in
prayer, and beating his breast with one hand, even after the
other was burnt away and had fallen off.
Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to
dispute with a commission of priests and doctors about the
mass. They were shamefully treated ; and it is recorded that
the Oxford scholars hissed and howled and groaned, and mis-
conducted themselves in an anything but a scholarly way. The
prisoners were taken back to jail, and afterwards tried in St
Mary's Church. They were all found guilty. On the sixteenth
of the month of October, Ridley and Latimer were brought out,
to make another of the dreadful bonfires.
The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant men
was in the City ditch, near Baliol College. On coming to the
dreadful spot, they kissed the stakes, and then embraced each
other. And then a learned doctor got up into a pulpit which
was placed there, and preached a sermon from the text,
" Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it
profiteth me nothing." When you think of the charity of
burning men alive, you may imagine that this learned doctor
had a rather brazen face. Ridley would have answered his
sermon when it came to an end, but was not allowed. When
Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had dressed himself
under his other clothes, in a new shroud ; and, as he stood in it
before all the people, it was noted of him, and long remembered,
MARY 2>Z1
that, whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a few minutes
before, he now stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge
that he was dying for a just and a great cause. Ridley's
brother-in-law was there with bags of gunpowder ; and when
they were both chained up, he tied them round their bodies.
Then, a light was thrown upon the pile to fire it. " Be of good
comfort. Master Ridley," said Latimer, at that awful moment,
" and play the man ! We shall this day light such a candle, by
God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." And
then he was seen to make motions with his hands as if he were
washing them in the flames, and to stroke his aged face with
them, and was heard to cry, " Father of Heaven, receive my
soul ! " He died quickly, but the fire, after having burned the
legs of Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to the iron
post, and crying, " O ! I cannot burn ! O ! for Christ's sake let
the fire come unto me ! " And still, when his brother-in-law
had heaped on more wood, he was heard through the blinding
smoke, still dismally crying, "O ! I cannot burn, I cannot
burn ! " At last, the gunpowder caught fire, and ended his
miseries.
Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his
tremendous account before God, for the cruelties he had so
much assisted in committing.
Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was brought
out again in February, for more examining and trying, by
Bonner, Bishop of London : another man of blood, who had
succeeded to Gardiner's work, even in his lifetime, when
Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer was now degraded as a
priest, and left for death ; but, if the Queen hated anyone on
earth, she hated him, and it was resolved that he should be
ruined and disgraced to the utmost. There is no doubt that the
Queen and her husband personally urged on these deeds,
because they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active in
the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known not to
be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful
people, and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion.
Deans and friars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed
him various attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him
money for his prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear,
Y
338 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
as many as six recantations. But when, after all, he was taken
out to be burnt, he was nobly true to his better self, and made a
glorious end.
After prayers and a sermon, Dr Cole, the preacher of the
day (who had been one of the artful priests about Cranmer in
prison), required him to make a public confession of his faith
before the people. This, Cole did, expecting that he would
declare himself a Roman Catholic. " I will make a profession
of my faith," said Cranmer, " and with a good will too."
Then, he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve of
his robe a written prayer and read it aloud. That done, he
kneeled and said the Lord's Prayer, all the people joining ; and
then he arose again and told them that he believed in the Bible,
and that in what he had lately written, he had written what was
not the truth ; and, because his right hand had signed those
papers, he would burn his right hand first when he came to the
fire. As for the Pope, he did refuse him and denounce him as
the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon the pious Dr Cole cried out
to the guards to stop that heretic's mouth and take him
away.
So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, where
he hastily took oflf his own clothes to make ready for the flames,
and stood before the people with a bald head and a white
and flowing beard. He was so firm now, when the worst was
come, that he again declared against his recantation, and was so
impressive and so undismayed, that a certain lord, who was one
of the directors of the execution, called out to the men to make
haste ! When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true to his latest
word, stretched out his right hand, and crying out, " This hand
hath offended ! " held it among the flames, until it blazed and
burned away. His heart was found entire among his ashes, and
he left at last a memorable name in English history. Cardinal
Pole celebrated the day by saying his first mass, and next
day he was made Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer's
place.
The Queen's husband, who was now mostly abroad in his
own dominions, and generally made a coarse jest of her to his
more familiar courtiers, was at war with France, and came over
to seek the assistance of England. England was very unwilling
MARY 339
to engage in a French war for his sake ; but it happened that
the King of France, at this very time, aided a descent upon the
English coast. Hence, war was declared, greatly to Philip's
satisfaction ; and the Queen raised a sum of money with which
to carry it on, by every unjustifiable means in her power.
It met with no profitable return, for the French Duke of
Guise surprised Calais, and the English sustained a complete
defeat. The losses they met with in France greatly morti-
fied the national pride, and the Queen never recovered the
blow.
There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, and I
am glad to write that the Queen took it, and the hour of her
deatii came. " When I am dead and my body is opened," she
said to those around her, " ye shall find Calais written on my
heart." I should have thought, if anything were written on it,
they would have found the words — Jane Grey, Hooper,
Rogers, Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and three hundred
people burnt alive within four years of my wicked
reign, including sixty women and forty little
CHILDREN. But it is enough that their deaths were wrjtten
in Heaven.
The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, fifteen
hundred and fifty-eight, after reigning not quite five years and
a half, and in the forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal Pole
died of the same fever next day.
As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has become famous,
and as BLOODY QuEEN MARY, she will ever be justly re-
membered with horror and detestation in Great Britain. Her
memory has been held in such abhorrence that some writers
have arisen in later years to take her part, and to show that she
was, upon the whole, quite an amiable and cheerful sovereign !
" By their fruits ye shall know them," said OUR Saviour. The
stake and the fire were the fruits of this reign, and you will
judge this Queen by nothing else.
340 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CHAPTER XXXI
ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH
There was great rejoicing all over the land when the Lords
of the Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the Princess
Elizabeth as the new Queen of England. Weary of the
barbarities of Mary's reign, the people looked with hope and
gladness to the new Sovereign. The nation seemed to wake
from a horrible dream ; and Heaven, so long hidden by the
smoke of the fires that roasted men and women to death,
appeared to brighten once more.
Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when she
rode through the streets of London, from the Tower to West-
minster Abbey, to be crowned. Her countenance was strongly
ELIZABETH 341
marked, but on the whole, commanding and dignified ; her hair
was red, and her nose something too long and sharp for a
woman's. She was not the beautiful creature her courtiers
made out ; but she was well enough, and no doubt looked all
the better for coming after the dark and gloomy Mary. She
was well educated, but a roundabout writer, and rather a hard
swearer and coarse talker. She was clever, but cunning and
deceitful, and inherited much of her father's violent temper. I
mention this now, because she has been so over-praised by one
party, and so over-abused by another, that it is hardly possible
to understand the greater part of her reign without first
understanding what kind of woman she really was.
She began her reign with the great advantage of having a
very wise and careful Minister, SiR WiLLiAM Cecil, whom she
afterwards made LORD Burleigh. Altogether, the people
had greater reason for rejoicing than they usually had, when
there were processions in the streets ; and they were happy with
some reason. All kinds of shows and images were set up ;
Gog and Magog were hoisted to the top of Temple Bar ; and
(which was more to the purpose) the Corporation dutifully
presented the young Queen with the sum of a thousand marks
in gold — so heavy a present, that she was obliged to take it
into her carriage with both hands. The coronation was a great
success ; and, on the next day, one of the courtiers presented a
petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was the custom to
release some prisoners on such occasions, she would have the
goodness to release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John, and also the Apostle Saint Paul, who had been for
some time shut up in a strange language so that the people
could not get at them.
To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first to
inquire of themselves whether they desired to be released or
not ; and, as a means of finding out, a great public discussion —
a sort of religious tournament — was appointed to take place
between certain champions of the two religions, in Westminster
Abbey. You may suppose that it was soon made pretty clear
to common sense, that for people to benefit by what they repeat
or read, it is rather necessary they should understand something
about it. Accordingly, a Church Service in plain English was
34a A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
settled, and othef laws and regulations were made, completely
establishing the great work of the. Reformation. The Romish
bishops and champions were not harshly dealt with, all things
considered ; and the Queen's Ministers were both prudent and
merciful.
The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortunate
cause of the greater part of such turmoil and bloodshed as
occurred in it, was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. We
will try to understand, in as few words as possible, who Mary
was, what she was, and how she came to be a thorn in the
royal pillow of Elizabeth.
She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland,
Mary of Guise. She had been married, when a mere child,
to the Dauphin, the son and heir of the King of France. The
Pope, who pretended that no one could rightfully wear the
crown of England without his gracious permission, was strongly
opposed to Elizabeth, who had not asked for the said gracious
permission. And as Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited
the English crown in right of her birth, supposing the English
Parliament not to have altered the succession, the Pope himself,
and most of the discontented who were followers of his, main-
tained that Mary was the rightful Queen of England, and
Elizabeth the wrongful Queen. Mary being so closely con-
nected with France, and France being jealous of England, there
was far greater danger in this than there would have been if
she had had no alliance with that great power. And when her
young husband, on the death of his father, became FRANCIS
THE Second, King of France, the matter grew very serious.
For the young couple styled themselves King and Queen of
England ; and the Pope was disposed to help them, by doing all
the mischief he could.
Now, the Reformed religion, under the guidance of a stern
and powerful preacher, named John Knox, and other such
men, had been making fierce progress in Scotland. It was still
a half savage country, where there was a great deal of murder-
ing and rioting continually going on ; and the Reformers,
instead of reforming those evils as they should have done, went
to work in the ferocious old Scottish spirit, laying churches and
chapels waste, pulling down pictures and altars, and knocking
ELIZABETH 343
about the Grey Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White
Friars, and the friars of all sorts of colours, in all directions.
This obdurate and harsh spirit of the Scottish Reformers (the
Scotch have always been rather a sullen and frowning people in
religious matters) put up the blood of the Romish French court,
and caused France to send troops over to Scotland, with the
hope of setting the friars of all sorts of colours on their legs
again ; of conquering that country first, and England after-
wards ; ,and so crushing the Reformation all to pieces. The
Scottish Reformers, who had formed a great league which they
called The Congregation of the Lord, secretly represented to
Elizabeth that, if the Reformed religion got the worst of it with
them, it would be likely to get the worst of it in England too ;
and thus, Elizabeth, though she had a high notion of the rights
of Kings and Queens to do anything they liked, sent an army
to Scotland to support the Reformers, who were in arms against
their sovereign. All these proceedings led to a treaty of peace
at Edinburgh, under which the French consented to depart from
the kingdom. By a separate treaty, Mary and her young
husband engaged to renounce their assumed title of King and
Queen of England. But this treaty they never fulfilled.
It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, that
the young French King died, leaving Mary a young widow.
She was then invited by her Scottish subjects to return home
and reign over them ; and as she was not now happy where she
was, she, after a little time, complied.
Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary Queen
of Scots embarked at Calais for her own rough, quarrelling
country. As she came out of the harbour, a vessel was lost
before her eyes, and she said, " O ! good God ! what an omen
this is for such a voyage I " She was very fond of France, and
sat on the deck, looking back at it and weeping, until it was
quite dark. When she went to bed, she directed to be called at
daybreak, if the French coast were still visible, that she might
behold it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear morning,
this was done, and she again wept for the country she was
leaving, and said many times, "Farewell, France! Farewell,
France ! I shall never see thee again ! " All this was long
remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a fair
344 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS EMBARKING AT CALAIS
young princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it gradually
came, together with her other distresses, to surround her with
greater sympathy than she deserved.
When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode at the
palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself among
uncouth strangers, and wild uncomfortable customs, very dif-
ferent from her experiences in the court of France. The very
people who were disposed to love her, made her head ache
when she was tired out by her voyage, with a serenade of dis-
cordant music — a fearful concert of bagpipes, I suppose — and
brought her and her train home to her palace on miserable
little Scotch horses that appeared to be half starved. Among
the people who were not disposed to love her, she found the
powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who were bitter upon
her amusements, however innocent, and denounced music and
dancing as works of the devil. John Knox himself often lec-
tured her, violently and angrily, and did much to make her life
unhappy. All these reasons confirmed her old attachment to
ELIZABETH 345
the Romish religion, and caused her, there is no doubt, most
imprudently and dangerously, both for herself and for England
too, to give a solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish Church
that if she ever succeeded to the English crown, she would set
up that religion again. In reading her unhappy history, you
must always remember this ; and also that during her whole
life she was constantly put forward against the Queen, in some
form or other, by the Romish party.
That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to like
her, is pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and jealous, and
had an extraordinary dislike to people being married. She
treated Lady Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane,
with such shameful severity, for no other reason than her being
secretly married, that she died and her husband was ruined ; so,
when a second marriage for Mary began to be talked about,
probably Elizabeth disliked her more. Not that Elizabeth
wanted suitors of her own, for they started up from Spain,
Austria, Sweden, and England. Her English lover at this time,
and one whom she much favoured too, was Lord Robert
Dudley, Earl of Leicester — himself secretly married to Amy
ROBSART, the daughter of an English gentleman, whom he was
strongly suspected of causing to be murdered, down at his
country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he might be free
to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great writer, SiR
Walter Scott, has founded one of his best romances. But if
Elizabeth knew how to lead her handsome favourite on, for her
own vanity and pleasure, she knew how to stop him for her own
pride ; and his love, and all the other proposals, came to nothing.
The Queen always declared in good set speeches, that she would
never be married at all, but would live and die a Maiden Queen.
It was a very pleasant and meritorious declaration I suppose ;
but it has been puffed and trumpeted so much, that I am rather
tired of it myself.
Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English
court had reasons for being jealous of them all, and even
proposed, as a matter of policy, that she should marry that
very Earl of Leicester who had aspired to be the husband of
Elizabeth. At last. Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lennox,
and himself descended from the Royal Family of Scotland,
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
went over with Elizabeth's con-
sent to try his fortune at Holy-
rood. He was a tall simpleton ;
and could dance and play the
guitar ; but I know of nothing
else he could do, unless it were
to get very drunk, and eat
gluttonously, and make a con-
temptible spectacle of himself
in many mean and vain ways.
However, he gained Mary's
heart ; not disdaining in the
pursuit of his object to ally
himself with one of her secre-
taries, David Rizzio, who had
great influence with her. He
soon married the Queen. This
marriage does not say much
for her, but what followed will
presently say less.
Mary's brother, the Earl
OF Murray, and head of the
Protestant party in Scotland,
had opposed this marriage,
partly on religious grounds, and
partly, perhaps, from personal
dislike of the very contemptible
bridegroom. When it had taken
place, through Mary's gaining
over to it the more powerful of
the lords about her, she banished
Murray for his pains ; and,
when he and some other nobles
rose in arms to support the re-
formed religion, she herself,
within a month of her wedding
day, rode against them in
armour, with loaded pistols in
her saddle. Driven out of Scot-
SOLDiER OF Elizabeth
ELIZABETH 347
land, they presented themselves before Elizabeth — who called
them traitors in public, and assisted them in private, according
to her crafty nature.
Mary had been married but a little while, when she began
to hate her husband ; who, in his turn, began to hate that David
Rizzio, with whom he had leagued to gain her favour, and
whom he now believed to be her lover. He hated Rizzio to
that extent, that he made a compact with Lord Ruthven and
three other lords to get rid of him by murder. This wicked
agreement they made in solemn secrecy upon the first of March,
fifteen hundred and sixty-six, and on the night of Saturday the
ninth, the conspirators were brought by Darnley up a private
staircase, dark and steep, into a range of rooms where they knew
that Mary was sitting at supper with her sister. Lady Argyle,
and this doomed man. When they went into the room, Darnley
took the Queen round the waist, and Lord Ruthven, who had
risen from a bed of sickness to do this murder, came in, gaunt
and ghastly, leaning on two men ; Rizzio ran behind the Queen
for shelter and protection. " Let him come out of the room,"
said Ruthven. " He shall not leave the room," replied the
Queen ; " I read his danger in your face, and it is my will that
he remain here." They then set upon him, struggled with him,
overturned the table, dragged him out, and killed him with fifty-
six stabs. When the Queen heard that he was dead, she said,
" No more tears. I will think now of revenge ! "
Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and pre-
vailed on the long idiot to abandon the conspirators and fly with
her to Dunbar. There, he issued a proclamation, audaciously
and falsely denying that he had had any knowledge of the late
bloody business ; and there they were joined by the Earl
BOTHWELL and some other nobles. With their help, they
raised eight thousand men, returned to Edinburgh, and drove
the assassins into England. Mary soon afterwards gave birth to
a son — still thinking of revenge.
That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband
after his late cowardice and treachery than she had had before,
was natural enough. There is little doubt that she now began
to love Bothwell instead, and to plan with him means of getting
rid of Darnley. Bothwell had such power over her that he
348 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
induced her even to pardon the assassins of Rizzio. The arrange-
ments for the christening of the young Prince were entrusted to
him, and he was one of the most important people at the cere-
mony, where the child was named JAMES : Elizabeth being his
godmother, though not present on the occasion. A week after-
wards, Darnley, who had left Mary and gone to his father's
house at Glasgow, being taken ill with the small-pox, she sent
her own physician to attend him. But there is reason to appre-
hend that this was merely a show and a pretence, and that she
knew what was doing, when Bothwell, within another month,
proposed to one of the late conspirators against Rizzio, to
murder Darnley, "for that it was the Queen's mind that he
should be taken away." It is certain that on that very day she
wrote to her ambassador in France, complaining of him, and
yet went immediately to Glasgow, feigning to be very anxious
about him, and to love him very much. If she wanted to get
him in her power, she succeeded to her heart's content ; for she
induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh, and to occupy,
instead of the palace, a lone house outside the city called the
Kirk of Field. Here, he lived for about a week. One Sunday
night, she remained with him until ten o'clock, and then left him,
to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given in
celebration of the marriage of one of her favourite servants. At
two o'clock in the morning the city was shaken by a great
explosion, and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms.
Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree at
some distance. How it came there, undisfigured and unscorched
by gunpowder, and how this crime came to be so clumsily and
strangely committed, it is impossible to discover. The deceit-
ful character of Mary, and the deceitful character of Elizabeth,
have rendered almost every part of their joint history uncertain
and obscure. But, I fear that Mary was unquestionably a party
to her husband's murder, and that this was the revenge she had
threatened. The Scotch people universally believed it. Voices
cried out in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night,
for justice on the murderess. Placards were posted by unknown
hands in the public places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer,
and the Queen as his accomplice ; and, when he afterwards
married her (though himself already married), previously mak-
YOUNG DOUGLAS STEALS THE KEYS OF LOCH LEVEN CASTLE
ELIZABETH 351
ing a show of taking her prisoner by force, the indignation of
the people knew no bounds. The women particularly are
described as having been quite frantic against the Queen, and
to have hooted and cried after her in the streets with terrific
vehemence.
Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife
had lived together but a month, when they were separated
for ever by the successes of a band of Scotch nobles who
associated against them for the protection of the young Prince,
whom Bothwell had vainly endeavoured to lay hold of, and
whom he would certainly have murdered, if the Earl OF Mar,
in whose hands the boy was, had not been firmly and honour-
ably faithful to his trust. Before this angry power, Bothwell
fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and mad, nine miserable
years afterwards. Mary being found by the associated lords
to deceive them at every turn, was sent a prisoner to Lochleven
Castle ; which, as it stood in the midst of a lake, could only be
approached by boat Here, one Lord Lindsay, who was so
much of a brute that the nobles would have done better if they
had chosen a mere gentleman for their messenger, made her
sign her abdication, and appoint Murray, Regent of Scotland.
Here, too, Murray saw her in a sorrowing and humble state.
She had better have remained in the castle of Lochleven,
dull prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake against it,
and the moving shadows of the water on the room-walls ; but
she could not rest there, and more than once tried to escape.
The first time she had nearly succeeded, dressed in the clothes
of her own washer-woman ; but, putting up her hand to prevent
one of the boatmen from lifting her veil, the men suspected her,
seeing how white it was, and rowed her back again. A short
time afterwards, her fascinating manners enlisted in her cause
a boy in the Castle, called the little Douglas, who, while the
family were at supper, stole the keys of the great gate, went
softly out with the Queen, locked the gate on the outside, and
rowed her away across the lake, sinking the keys as they went
along. On the opposite shore she was met by another Douglas,
and some few lords ; and, so accompanied, rode away on horse-
back to Hamilton, where they raised three thousand men.
Here, she issued a proclamation, declaring that the abdication
35^ A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
she had signed In her prison was illegal, and requiring the
Regent to yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier,
and in no way discomposed although he was without an army,
Murray pretended to treat with her, until he had collected a
force about half equal to her own, and then he gave her battle.
In one quarter of an hour he cut down all her hopes. She had
another weary ride on horseback of sixty long Scotch miles,
and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, whence she fled for
safety to Elizabeth's dominions.
Mary Queen of Scots came to England — to her own ruin,
the trouble of the kingdom, and the misery and death of many
— in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight. How
she left it and the world, nineteen years afterwards, we have
now to see.
Second Part
When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, without
money and even without any other clothes than those she wore,
she wrote to Elizabeth, representing herself as an innocent and
injured piece of Royalty, and entreating her assistance to oblige
her Scottish subjects to take her back again and obey her.
But, as her character was already known in England to be a
very different one from what she made it out to be, she was
told in answer that she must first clear herself. Made uneasy
by this condition, Mary, rather than stay in England, would
have gone to Spain, or to France, or would even have gone
back to Scotland. But, as her doing either would have been
likely to trouble England afresh, it was decided that she should
be detained here. She first came to Carlisle, and, after that,
was moved about from castle to castle, as was considered
necessary ; but England she never left again.
After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of clearing
herself, Mary, advised by LORD Herries, her best friend in
England, agreed to answer the charges against her, if the
Scottish noblemen who made them would attend to maintain
them before such English noblemen as Elizabeth might appoint
for that purpose. Accordingly, such an assembly, under the
ELIZABETH 353
name of a conference, met, first at York, and afterwards at
Hampton Court. In its presence, Lord Lennox, Darnley's
father, openly charged Mary with the murder of his son ; and
whatever Mary's friends may now say or write in her behalf,
there is no doubt that, when her brother Murray produced
against her a casket containing certain guilty letters and verses
which he stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, she
withdrew from the inquiry. Consequently, it is to be supposed
that she was then considered guilty by those who had the best
opportunities of judging of the truth, and that the feeling which
afterwards arose in her behalf was a very generous, but not a
very reasonable one.
However, the DuKE OF NORFOLK, an honourable but rather
weak nobleman, partly because Mary was captivating, partly
because he was ambitious, partly because he was over-persuaded
by artful plotters against Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea
that he would like to marry the Queen of Scots — though he
was a little frightened, too, by the letters in the casket. This
idea being secretly encouraged by some of the noblemen of
Elizabeth's court, and even by the favourite Earl of Leicester
(because it was objected to by other favourites who were his
rivals), Mary expressed her approval of it, and the King of
France and the King of Spain are supposed to have done the
same. It was not so quietly planned, though, but that it came
to Elizabeth's ears, who warned the Duke " to be careful what
sort of pillow he was going to lay his head upon." He made a
humble reply at the time ; but turned sulky soon afterwards,
and, being considered dangerous, was sent to the Tower.
Thus, from the moment of Mary's coming to England she
began to be the centre of plots and miseries.
A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of these,
and it was only checked by many executions and much blood-
shed. It was followed by a great conspiracy of the Pope and
some of the Catholic sovereigns of Europe to depose Elizabeth,
place Mary on the throne, and restore the unreformed religion.
It is almost impossible to doubt that Mary knew and approved
of this ; and the Pope himself was so hot in the matter that he
issued a bull, in which he openly called Elizabeth the " pretended
Queen " of England, excommunicated her, and excommunicated
z
354 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
all her subjects who should continue to obey her. A copy of
this miserable paper got into London, and was found one morn-
ing publicly posted on the Bishop of London's gate. A great
hue and cry being raised, another copy was found in the
chamber of a student of Lincoln's Inn, who confessed, being
put upon the rack, that he had received it from one JOHN
Felton, a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames, near
Southwark. This John Felton, being put upon the rack too,
confessed that he had posted the placard on the Bishop's gate.
For this offence he was, within four days, taken to St Paul's
Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered. As to the Pope's
bull, the people by the Reformation having thrown off the Pope,
did not care much, you may suppose, for the Pope's throwing
off them. It was a mere dirty piece of paper, and not half so
powerful as a street ballad.
On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, the
poor Duke of Norfolk was released. It would have been well
for him if he had kept away from the Tower evermore, and from
the snares that had taken him there. But, even while he was in
that dismal place he corresponded with Mary ; and, as soon as he
was out of it, he began to plot again. Being discovered in
correspondence with the Pope, with a view to a rising in Eng-
land, which should force Elizabeth to consent to his marriage
with Mary, and to repeal the laws against the Catholics, he was
recommitted to the Tower and brought to trial. He was found
guilty by the unanimous verdict of the Lords who tried him,
and was sentenced to the block.
It is very difificult to make out, at this distance of time, and be-
tween opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth really was a humane
woman, or desired to appear so, or was fearful of shedding the
blood of people of great name who were popular in the country.
Twice she commanded and countermanded the execution of
this Duke, and it did not take place until five months after his
trial. The scaffold was erected on Tower Hill, and there he
died like a brave man. He refused to have his eyes bandaged,
saying that he was not at all afraid of death ; and he admitted
the justice of his sentence, and was much regretted by the
people.
Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time from
ELIZABETH 355
disproving her guilt, she was very careful never to do anything
that would admit it. All such proposals as were made to her
by Elizabeth for her release, required that admission in some
form or other, and therefore came to nothing. Moreover, both
women being artful and treacherous, and neither ever trusting
the other, it was not likely that they could ever make an agree-
ment. So, the Parliament, aggravated by what the Pope had
done, made new and strong laws against the spreading of the
Catholic religion in England, and declared it treason in anyone
to say that the Queen and her successors were not the lawful
sovereigns of England. It would have done more than this, but
for Elizabeth's moderation.
Since the Reformation, there had come to be three great sects
of religious people — or people who called themselves so — in
England ; that is to say, those who belonged to the Reformed
Church, those who belonged to the Unreformed Church, and
those who were called the Puritans, because they said that they
wanted to have everything very pure and plain in all the Church
service. These last were for the most part an uncomfortable
people, who thought it highly meritorious to dress in a hideous
manner, talk through their noses, and oppose all harmless en-
joyments. But they were powerful too, and very much in
earnest, and they were, one and all, the determined enemies of
the Queen of Scots. The Protestant feeling in England was
further strengthened by the tremendous cruelties to which Pro-
testants were exposed in France and the Netherlands. Scores
of thousands of them were put to death in those countries with
every cruelty that can be imagined, and at last, in the autumn
of the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, one of
the greatest barbarities ever committed in the world took place
at Paris.
It is called in history, The Massacre of Saint Bar-
tholomew, because it took place on Saint Bartholomew's Eve.
The day fell on Saturday the twenty-third of August. • On that
day all the great leaders of the Protestants (who were there
called Huguenots), were assembled together, for the purpose,
as was represented to them, of doing honour to the marriage of
their chief, the young King of Navarre, with the sister of
Charles the Ninth: a miserable young King who then
356 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
occupied the French throne. This dull creature was made to
believe by his mother and other fierce Catholics about him that
the H-uguenots meant to take his life ; and he was persuaded to
give secret orders that, on the tolling of a great bell, they should
be fallen upon by an overpowering force of armed men, and
slaughtered wherever they could be found. When the appointed
hour was close at hand, the stupid wretch, trembling from head
to foot, was taken into a balcony by his mother to see the atro-
cious work begun. The moment the bell tolled, the murderers
broke forth. During all that night and the two next days, they
broke into the houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the
Protestants, men, women, and children, and flung their bodies
into the streets. They were shot at in the streets as they passed
along, and their blood ran down the gutters. Upwards of ten
thousand Protestants were killed in Paris alone ; in all France
four or five times that number. To return thanks to Heaven
for these diabolical murders, the Pope and his train actually
went in public procession at Rome; and, as if this were not
shame enough for them, they had a medal struck to com-
memorate the event. But, however comfortable the wholesale
murders were to these high authorities, they had not that sooth-
ing effect upon the doll-King. I am happy to state that he
never knew a moment's peace afterwards ; that he was continu-
ally crying out that he saw the Huguenots covered with blood
and wounds falling dead before him ; and that he died within a
year, shrieking and yelling and raving to that degree, that if all
the Popes who had ever lived had been rolled into one, they would
not have afforded His guilty Majesty the slightest consolation.
When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in England, it
made a powerful impression indeed upon the people. If they
began to run a little wild against the Catholics at about this time,
this fearful reason for it, coming so soon after the days of bloody
Queen Mary, must be remembered in their excuse. The Court
was not quite so honest as the people — but perhaps it sometimes
is not. It received the French ambassador, with all the lords
and ladies dressed in deep mourning, and keeping a profound
silence. Nevertheless, a proposal of marriage which he had
made to Elizabeth only two days before the eve of Saint
Bartholomew, on behalf of the Duke of Alen^on, the French
ELIZABETH ^57
King's brother, a boy of seventeen, still went on ; while on the
other hand, in her usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied
the Huguenots with money and weapons.
I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine speeches,
of which I have confessed myself to be rather tired, about
living and dying a Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was " going " to be
married pretty often. Besides always having some English
favourite or other whom she by turns encouraged and swore at
and knocked about — for the Maiden Queen was very free with
her fists — she held this French Duke off and on through several
years. When he at last came over to England, the marriage
articles were actually drawn up, and it was settled that the
wedding should take place in six weeks. The Queen was then
so bent upon it, that she prosecuted a poor Puritan named
Stubbs, and a poor bookseller named Page, for writing and
publishing a pamphlet against it. Their right hands were
chopped off for this crime ; and poor Stubbs — more loyal than
I should have been myself under the circumstances — im-
mediately pulled off his hat with his left hand, and cried,
" God save the Queen ! " Stubbs was cruelly treated ; for the
marriage never took place after all, though the Queen pledged
herself to the Duke with a ring from her own finger. He went
away, no better than he came, when the courtship had lasted
some ten years altogether ; and he died a couple of years
afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to have been
really fond of him. It is not much to her credit, for he was a
bad enough member of a bad family.
To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of
priests who were very busy in England, and who were much
dreaded. These were the JESUITS (who were everywhere in all
sorts of disguises), and the SEMINARY PRIESTS. The people
had a great horror of the first, because they were known to
have taught that murder was lawful if it were done with an
object of which they approved ; and they had a great horror of
the second, because they came to teach the old religion, and to
be the successors of " Queen Mary's priests," as those yet linger-
ing in England were called, when they should die out. The
severest laws were made against them, and were most un-
mercifully executed. Those who sheltered them in their houses
358 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
often suffered heavily for what was an act of humanity ; and the
rack, that cruel torture which tore men's limbs asunder, was
constantly kept going. What these unhappy men confessed,
or what was ever confessed by anyone under that agony, must
always be received with great doubt, as it is certain that people
have frequently owned to the most absurd and impossible crimes
to escape such dreadful suffering. But I cannot doubt it to
have been proved by papers, that there were many plots, both
among the Jesuits, and with France, and with Scotland, and
with Spain, for the destruction of Queen Elizabeth, for the plac-
ing of Mary on the throne, and for the revival of the old religion.
If the English people were too ready to believe in plots,
there were, as I have said, good reasons for it. When the
massacre of Saint Bartholomew was yet fresh in their re-
collection, a great Protestant Dutch hero, the PRINCE OF
Orange, was shot by an assassin, who confessed that he had
been kept and trained for the purpose in a college of Jesuits.
The Dutch, in this surprise and distress, offered to make
Elizabeth their sovereign ; but she declined the honour, and
sent them a small army instead, under the command of the
Earl of Leicester, who, although a capital Court favourite, was
not much of a general. He did so little in Holland, that his
campaign there would probably have been forgotten, but for its
occasioning the death of one of the best writers, the best knights,
and the best gentlemen, of that or any age. This was SiR
Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a musket ball in the
thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, after having had his own
killed under him. He had to ride back wounded, a long distance,
and was very faint with fatigue and loss of blood, when some
water, for which he had eagerly asked, was handed to him.
But he was so good and gentle even then, that seeing a poor
badly wounded common soldier lying on the ground, looking at
the water with longing eyes, he said, " Thy necessity is greater
than mine," and gave it up to him. This touching action of a
noble heart is perhaps as well known as any incident in history
— is as famous far and wide as the blood-stained Tower of
London, with its axe, and block, and murders out of number.
So delightful is an act of true humanity, and so glad are
mankind to remember it.
ELIZABETH 359
At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every day.
I suppose the people never did live under such continual terrors
as those by which they were possessed now, of Catholic risings,
and burnings, and poisonings, and I don't know what. Still, we
must always remember that they lived near and close to awful
realities of that kind, and that with their experience it was not
difficult to believe in any enormity. The government had the
same fear, and did not take the best means of discovering the
truth — for, besides torturing the suspected, it employed paid
spies, who will always lie for their own profit. It even made
some of the conspiracies it brought to light, by sending false
letters to disaffected people, inviting them to join in pretended
plots, which they too readily did.
But, one great real plot was at length discovered, and it
ended the career of Mary Queen of Scots. A seminary priest
named BALLARD, and a Spanish soldier named Savage, set on
and encouraged by certain French priests, imparted a design to
one Antony Babington — a gentleman of fortune in Derby-
shire, who had been for some time a secret agent of Mary's —
for murdering the Queen. Babington then confided the scheme
to some other Catholic gentlemen who were his friends, and
they joined in it heartily. They were vain, weak-headed young
men, ridiculously confident, and preposterously proud of their
plan ; for they got a gimcrack painting made, of the six choice
spirits who were to murder Elizabeth, with Babington in an
attitude for the centre figure. Two of their number, however,
one of whom was a priest, kept Elizabeth's wisest minister.
Sir Francis Walsingham, acquainted with the whole project
from the first. The conspirators were completely deceived to
the final point, when Babington gave Savage, because he was
shabby, a ring from his finger, and some money from his purse,
wherewith to buy himself new clothes in which to kill the Queen.
Walsingham, having then full evidence against the whole band,
and two letters of Mary's besides, resolved to seize them. Sus-
pecting something wrong, they stole out of the city, one by one,
and hid themselves in St John's Wood, and other places which
really were hiding places then ; but they were all taken, and all
executed. When they were seized, a gentleman was sent from
Court to inform Mary of the fact, and of her being involved in
36o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the discovery. Her friends have complained that she was kept
in very hard and severe custody. It does not appear very
likely, for she was going out a hunting that very morning.
Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one in
France who had good information of what was secjetly doing,
that in holding Mary alive, she held "the wolf who would
devour her." The Bishop of London had, more lately, given
the Queen's favourite minister the advice in writing, " forthwith
to cut off the Scottish Queen's head." The question now was,
what to do with her ? The Earl of Leicester wrote a little note
home from Holland, recommending that she should be quietly
poisoned ; that noble favourite having accustomed his mind, it
is possible, to remedies of that nature. His black advice, how-
ever, was disregarded, and she was brought to trial at Fotheringay
Castle in Northamptonshire, before a tribunal of forty, composed
of both religions. There, and in the Star Chamber at West-
minster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended herself with
great ability, but could only deny the confessions that had been
made by Babington and others ; could only call her own letters,
produced against her by her own secretaries, forgeries ; and, in
short, could only deny everything. She was found guilty, and
declared to have incurred the penalty of death. The Parliament
met, approved the sentence, and prayed the Queen to have it
executed. The Queen replied that she requested them to con-
sider whether no means could be found of saving Mary's life
without endangering her own. The Parliament rejoined. No ;
and the citizens illuminated their houses and lighted bonfires,
in token of their joy that all these plots and troubles were to be
ended by the death of the Queen of Scots.
She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a letter
to the Queen of England, making three entreaties ; first, that
she might be buried in France ; secondly, that she might not be
executed in secret, but before her servants and some others ;
thirdly, that after her death, her servants should not be molested,
but should be suffered to go home with the legacies she left them.
It was an affecting letter, and Elizabeth shed tears over it, but
sent no answer. Then came a special ambassador from France,
and another from Scotland, to intercede for Mary's life; and
then the nation began to clamour, more and more, for her death.
ELIZABETH 361
What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, can
never be known now ; but I strongly suspect her of only wish-
ing one thing more than Mary's death ; and that was to keep
free of the blame of it. On the first of February, one thousand
five hundred and eighty-seven, Lord Burleigh having drawn out
the warrant for the execution, the Queen sent to the secretary
Davison to bring it to her, that she might sign it : which she
did. Next day, when Davison told her it was sealed, she angrily
asked him why such haste was necessary ? Next day but one,
she joked about it, and swore a little. Again, next day but
one, she seemed to complain that it was not yet done, but still
she would not be plain with those about her. So, on the
seventh, the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of
Northamptonshire, came with the warrant to Fotheringay, to
tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for death.
When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary made a
frugal supper, drank to her servants, read over her will, went to
bed, slept for some hours, and then arose and passed the remainder
of the night saying prayers. In the morning she dressed
herself in her best clothes ; and, at eight o'clock when the
sheriff came for her to her chapel, took leave of her servants
who were there assembled praying with her, and went down-
stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other.
Two of her women and four of her men were allowed to be
present in the hall ; where a low scaffold, only two feet from the
ground, was erected and covered with black; and where the
executioner from the Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed in
black velvet. The hall was full of people. While the sentence
was being read she sat upon a stool ; and, when it was finished,
she again denied her guilt, as she had done before. The Earl
of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough, in their Protestant zeal,
made some very unnecessary speeches to her ; to which she
replied that she died in the Catholic religion, and they need not
trouble themselves about that matter. When her head and
neck were uncovered by the executioners, she said that she had
not been used to be undressed by such hands, or before so
much company. Finally, one of her women fastened a cloth
over her face, and she laid her neck upon the block, and repeated
more than once in Latin, " Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend
362 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ARMS OF THE TUDOR PERIOD
my spirit ! " Some say her head was struck off in two blows,
some say in three. However that be, when it was held up,
streaming with blood, the real hair beneath the false hair she
had long worn was seen to be as grey as that of a woman of
seventy, though she was at that time only in her forty-sixth
year. All her beauty was gone.
But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who cowered
under her dress, frightened, when she went upon the scaffold,
and who lay down beside her headless body when all her earthly
sorrows were over.
Third Part
On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that the
sentence had been executed on the Queen of Scots, she showed
the utmost grief and rage, drove her favourites from her with
violent indignation, and sent Davison to the Tower ; from
which place he was only released in the end by paying an
ELIZABETH 363
immense fine which completely ruined him. Elizabeth not
only over-acted her part in making these pretences, but most
basely reduced to poverty one of her faithful servants for no
other fault than obeying her commands.
James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, made a show likewise
of being very angry on the occasion ; but, as he was a pensioner
of England to the amount of five thousand pounds a year, and
had known very little of his mother, and possibly regarded her
as the murderer of his father, he soon took it quietly.
Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater
things than ever had been done yet, to set up the Catholic
religion and punish Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing
that he and the Prince of Parma were making great prepara-
tions for this purpose, in order to be beforehand with them sent
out Admiral Drake (a famous navigator, who had sailed
about the world, and had already brought great plunder from
Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where be burnt a hundred vessels
full of stores. This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off
the invasion for a year ; but it was none the less formidable for
that, amounting to one hundred and thirty ships, nineteen
thousand soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two thousand slaves,
and between two and three thousand great guns. England
was not idle in making ready to resist this great force. All the
men between sixteen years old and sixty, were trained and
drilled ; the national fleet of ships (in number only thirty-four
at first) was enlarged by public contributions and by private
ships, fitted out by noblemen ; the city of London, of its own
accord, furnished double the number of ships and men that it
was required to provide ; and, if ever the national spirit was up
in England, it was up all through the country to resist the
Spaniards. Some of the Queen's advisers were for seizing the
principal English Catholics, and putting them to death ; but
the Queen — who, to her honour, used to say, that she would
never believe any ill of her subjects, which a parent would not
believe of her own children — rejected the advice, and only
confined a few of those who were the most suspected, in the
fens in Lincolnshire. The great body of Catholics deserved
this confidence; for they behaved most loyally, nobly, and
bravely.
364 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CANNON OF THE TUDOR PERIOD
So, with all England firing up like one strong angry man,
and with both sides of the Thames fortified, and with the
soldiers under arms, and with the sailors in their ships, the
country waited for the coming of the proud Spanish fleet, which
was called The Invincible Armada. The Queen herself,
riding in armour on a white horse, and the Earl of Essex and
the Earl of Leicester holding her bridle rein, made a brave
speech to the troops at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravesend, which
was received with such enthusiasm as is seldom known. Then
came the Spanish Armada into the English Channel, sailing
along in the form of a half moon, of such great size that it was
seven miles broad. But the English were quickly upon it, and
woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped a little out of
the half moon, for the English took them instantly ! And it
soon appeared that the great Armada was anything but in-
vincible, for, on a summer night, bold Drake sent eight blazing
fire-ships right into the midst of it. In terrible consternation
the Spaniards tried to get out to sea, and so became dispersed ;
ELIZABETH 365
the English pursued them at a great advantage ; a storm came
on, and drove the Spaniards among rocks and shoals ; and the
swift end of the Invincible fleet was, that it lost thirty great
ships and ten thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced, sailed
home again. Being afraid to go by the English Channel, it
sailed all round Scotland and Ireland ; and, some of the ihips
getting cast away on the latter coast in bad weather, the Irish,
who were a kind of savages, plundered those vessels and killed
their crews. So ended this great attempt to invade and
conquer England. And I think it will be a long time before
any other invincible fleet coming to England with the same
object, will fare much better than the Spanish Armada.
Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of English
bravery, he was so little the wiser for it, as still to entertain his
old designs, and even to conceive the absurd idea of placing his
daughter on the English throne. But the Earl of Essex, SiR
Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Howard, and some other
distinguished leaders, put to sea from Plymouth, entered the
port of Cadiz once more, obtained a complete victory over the
shipping assembled there, and got possession of the town. In
obedience to the Queen's express instructions, they behaved
with great humanity ; and the principal loss of the Spaniards
was a vast sum of money which they had to pay for ransom.
This was one of many gallant achievements on the sea, effected
in this reign. Sir Walter Raleigh himself, after marrying a
maid of honour and giving offence to the Maiden Queen
thereby, had already sailed to South America in search of gold,
and written an excellent account of his voyage.
The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir Thomas
Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to follow. The
principal favourite was the Earl of Essex, a spirited and
handsome man, a favourite with the people too as well as with
the Queen, and possessed of many admirable qualities. It was
much debated at Court whether there should be peace with
Spain or no, and he was very urgent for war. He also tried
hard to have his own way in the appointment of a deputy to
govern in Ireland. One day, while this question was in dispute,
he hastily took offence, and turned his back upon the Queen ;
as a gentle reminder of which impropriety, the Queen gave him
366 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
a tremendous box on the ear, and told him to go to the devil.
He went home instead, and did not reappear at Court for half a
year or so, when he and the Queen were reconciled, though
never (as some suppose) thoroughly.
From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that of the
Queen seemed to be blended together. The Irish were still
perpetually quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and he
went over to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, to the great joy of his
enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh among the rest), who were glad to
have so dangerous a rival far off. Not being by any means suc-
cessful there, and knowing that his enemies would take advantage
of that circumstance to injure him with the Queen, he came home
again, though against her orders. The Queen being taken by
surprise when he appeared before her, gave him her hand to
kiss, and he was overjoyed — though it was not a very lovely
hand by this time — but in the course of the same day she ordered
him to confine himself to his room, and two or three days
afterwards had him taken into custody. With the same sort of
caprice — and as capricious an old woman she now was, as ever
wore a crown or a head either — she sent him broth from her
own table on his falling ill from anxiety, and cried about
him.
He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in his
books, and he did so for a time ; not the least happy time, I
dare say, of his life. But it happened unfortunately for him,
that he held a monopoly in sweet wines: which means that
nobody could sell them without purchasing his permission.
This right, which was only for a term, expiring, he applied
to have it renewed. The Queen refused, with the rather strong
observation — but she did make strong observations — that an
unruly beast must be stinted in his food. Upon this, the angry
Earl, who had been already deprived of many offices, thought
himself in danger of complete ruin, and turned against the
Queen, whom he called a vain old woman, who had grown as
crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. These uncompli-
mentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately snapped
up and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put in a better
temper, you may believe. The same Court ladies, when they
had beautiful dark hair of their own, used to wear false red hair,
f^^^^^g
SPANISH VESSEL OUT OF ACTION
ELIZABETH 369
to be like the Queen, So they were not very high-spirited ladies,
however high in rank.
The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends of
his who used to meet at Lord Southampton's house, was to
obtain possession of the Queen, and oblige her by force to dis-
miss her ministers and change her favourites. On Saturday the
seventh of February, one thousand six hundred and one, the
council suspecting this, summoned the Earl to come before
them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it was then settled
among his friends, that as the next day would be Sunday, when
many of the citizens usually assembled at the Cross by St Paul's
Cathedral, he should make one bold effort to induce them to
rise and follow him to the Palace.
So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of adherents
started out of his house — Essex House by the Strand, with steps
to the river — having first shut up in it, as prisoners, some mem-
bers of the council who came to examine him — and hurried into
the City with the Earl at their head, crying out " For the Queen !
For the Queen ! A plot is laid for my life I " No one heeded
them, however, and when they came to St Paul's there were no
citizens there. In the meantime the prisoners at Essex House
had been released by one of the Earl's own friends ; he had been
promptly declared a traitor in the City itself; and the streets
were barricaded with carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl
got back to his house by water, with difficulty, and after an
attempt to defend his house against the troops and cannon
by which he was soon surrounded, gave himself up that night.
He was brought to trial on the nineteenth, and found guilty ;
on the twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill, where he
died, at thirty-four years old, both courageously and penitently.
His step-father suffered with him. His enemy. Sir Walter
Raleigh, stood near the scaffold all the time — but not so near
it as we shall see him stand, before we finish his history.
In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary
Queen of Scots, the Queen had commanded, and countermanded,
and again commanded, the execution. It is probable that the
death of her young and gallant favourite in the prime of his
good qualities, was never off her mind afterwards, but she held
out, the same vain, obstinate, and capricious woman, for another
2 A
370 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
year. Then she danced before her Court on a state occasion —
and cut, I should think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so in
an immense ruff, stomacher and wig, at seventy years old. For
another year still, she held out, but, without any more dancing,
and as a moody, sorrowful, broken creature. At last, on the
tenth of March, one thousand six hundred and three, having
been ill of a very bad cold, and made worse by the death of the
Countess of Nottingham, who was her intimate friend, she fell
into a stupor and was supposed to- be dead. She recovered her
consciousness, however, and then nothing would induce her to
go to bed ; for she said that she knew that if she did, she should
never get up again. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on
the floor, without any food, until the Lord Admiral got her into
bed at last, partly by persuasions and partly by main force.
When they asked who should succeed her, she replied that her
seat had been the seat of Kings, and that she would have for
her successor, " No rascal's son, but a King's." Upon this, the
lords present stared at one another, and took the liberty of
asking whom she meant ; to which she replied, " Whom should
I mean, but our cousin of Scotland I " This was on the
twenty-third of March. They asked her once again that day,
after she was speechless, whether she was still in the same mind .'
She struggled up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in
the form of a crown, as the only reply she could make. At three
o'clock next morning, she very quietly died, in the forty-fifth
year of her reign.
That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for ever
memorable by the distinguished men who flourished in it.
Apart from the great voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, whom
it produced, the names of BACON, SPENSER, and Shakespeare,
will always be remembered with pride and veneration by the
civilized world, and will always impart (though with no great
reason, perhaps) some portion of their lustre to the name of
Elizabeth herself It was a great reign for discovery, for com-
merce, and for English enterprise and spirit in general. It was
a great reign for the Protestant religion and for the Reformation
which made England free. The Queen was very popular, and
in her progresses, or journeys, about her dominions, was every-
where received with the liveliest joy. I think the truth is, that
JAMES THE FIRST 371
she was not half so good as she has been made out, and not
half so bad as she has been made out. She had her fine quali-
ties, but she was coarse, capricious, and treacherous, and had all
the faults of an excessively vain young woman long after she
was an old one. On the whole, she had a great deal too much
of her father in her, to please me.
Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the
course of these five-and-forty years in the general manner of
living ; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were
still the national amusements ; and a coach was so rarely seen,
and was such an ugly and cumbersome affair when it was seen,
that even the Queen herself, on many high occasions, rode on
horseback on a pillion behind the Lord Chancellor.
CHAPTER XXXII
ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST
" Our cousin of Scotland " was ugly, awkward, and shuffling
both in mind and person. His tongue was much too large for
his mouth, his legs were much too weak for his body, and his
dull goggle-eyes stared and rolled like an idiot's. He was
cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cow-
ardly, a great swearer, and the most conceited man on earth.
His figure — what is commonly called rickety from his birth —
presented a most ridiculous appearance, dressed in thick padded
clothes, as a safeguard against being stabbed (of which he lived
in continual fear), of a grass-green colour from head to foot,
with a hunting-horn dangling at his side instead of a sword, and
his hat and feather sticking over one eye, or hanging on the back
of his head, as he happened to toss it on. He used to loll on
the necks of his favourite courtiers, and slobber their faces, and
kiss and pinch their cheeks ; and the greatest favourite he ever
had, used to sign himself in his letters to his royal master. His
Majesty's " dog and slave," and used to address his majesty as
" his Sowship." His majesty was the worst rider ever seen, and
thought himself the best. He was one of the most impertinent
talkers (in the broadest Scotch) ever heard, and boasted of being
372 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
unanswerable in all manner of argument. He wrote some of
the most wearisome treatises ever read — among others, a book
upon witchcraft, in which he was a devout believer — and thought
himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, and wrote, and
said, that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws he
pleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. This
is the plain true character of the personage whom the greatest
men about the court praised and flattered to that degree, that I
doubt if there be anything much more shameful in the annals
of human nature.
He came to the English throne with great ease. The
miseries of a disputed succession had been felt so long, and so
dreadfully, that he was proclaimed within a few hours of Eliza-
beth's death, and was accepted by the nation, even without
being asked to give any pledge that he would govern well, or
that he would redress crying grievances. He took a month to
come from Edinburgh to London ; and, by way of exercising
his new power, hanged a pickpocket on the journey without any
trial, and knighted everybody he could lay hold of. He made
JAMES THE FIRST 2>1i
two hundred knights before he got to his palace in London,
and seven hundred before he had been in it three months. He
also shovelled sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords —
and there was a pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among
them, you may believe.
His Sowship's prime Minister, Cecil (for I cannot do better
than call his majesty what his favourite called him), was the
enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir Walter's political
friend, Lord Cobham ; and his Sowship's first trouble was a
plot originated by these two, and entered into by some others,
with the old object of seizing the King and keeping him in
imprisonment until he should change his ministers. There were
Catholic priests in the plot, and there were Puritan noblemen
too ; for, although the Catholics and Puritans were strongly
opposed to each other, they united at this time against his
Sowship, because they knew that he had a design against both,
after pretending to be friendly to each ; this design being to
have only one high and convenient form of the Protestant
religion, which everybody should be bound to belong to, whether
they liked it or not. This plot was mixed up with another,
which may or may not have had some reference to placing on
the throne, at some time, the Lady Arabella Stuart ; whose
misfortune it was, to be the daughter of the younger brother of
his Sowship's father, but who was quite innocent of any part in
the scheme. Sir Walter Raleigh was accused on the confession
of Lord Cobham — a miserable creature, who said one thing at
one time, and another thing at another time, and could be relied
upon in nothing. The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh lasted from
eight in the morning until nearly midnight ; he defended himself
with such eloquence, genius, and spirit against all accusations,
and against the insults of Coke, the Attorney-General — who,
according to the custom of the time, foully abused him — that
those who went there .detesting the prisoner, came away
admiring him, and declaring that anything so wonderful and so
captivating was never heard. He was found guilty, nevertheless,
and sentenced to death. Execution was deferred, and he was
taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, less fortunate,
were executed with the usual atrocity ; and Lord Cobham and
two others were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship
374 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
thought it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people
by pardoning these three at the very block ; but, blundering,
and bungling, as usual, he had very nearly overreached himself.
For, the messenger on horseback who brought the pardon, came
so late, that he was pushed to the outside of the crowd, and was
obliged to shout and roar out what he came for. The miserable
Cobham did not gain much by being spared that day. He
lived, both as a prisoner and a beggar, utterly despised, and
miserably poor, for thirteen years, and then died in an old
outhouse belonging to one of his former servants.
This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up
in the Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puritans
on their presenting a petition to him, and had it all his own
way — not so very wonderful, as he would talk continually, and
would not hear anybody else — and filled the Bishops with
admiration. It was comfortably settled that there was to be
only one form of religion, and that all men were to think
exactly alike. But, although this was arranged two centuries
and a half ago, and although the arrangement was supported
by much fining and imprisonment, I do not find that it is quite
successful, even yet.
His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of
himself as a king, had a very low opinion of Parliament as
a power that audaciously wanted to control him. When he
called his first Parliament after he had been king a year, he
accordingly thought he would take pretty high ground with
them, and told them that he commanded them " as an absolute
king." The Parliament thought those strong words, and saw
the necessity of upholding their authority. His Sowship had
three children : Prince Henry, Prince Charles, and the Prince'ss
Elizabeth. It would have been well for one of these, and we
shall too soon see which, if he had learnt a little wisdom
concerning Parliaments from his father's obstinacy.
Now, the people still labouring under their old dread of the
Catholic religion, this Parliament revived and strengthened the
severe laws against it. And this so angered ROBERT Catesby,
a restless Catholic gentleman of an old family, that he formed
one of the most desperate and terrible designs ever conceived
in the mind of man ; no less a scheme than the Gunpowder Plot.
RALEIGH IN THE TOWER
JAMES THE FIRST ^^^
His object was, when the King, lords, and commons, should
be assembled at the next opening of Parliament, to blow them
up, one and all, with a great mine of gunpowder. The first
person to whom he confided this horrible idea was Thomas
Winter, a Worcestershire gentleman who had served in the
army abroad, and had been secretly employed in Catholic projects.
While Winter was yet undecided, and when he had gone over
to the Netherlands, to learn from the Spanish Ambassador there
whether there was any hope of Catholics being relieved through
the intercession of the King of Spain with his Sowship, he found
at Ostend a tall, dark, daring man, whom he had known when
they were both soldiers abroad, and whose name was GuiDO — or
Guy — Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, he proposed it to this
man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate deed, and
they two came back to England together. Here, they admitted
two other conspirators : THOMAS PERCY, related to the Earl of
Northumberland, and JOHN WRIGHT, his brother-in-law. All
these met together in a solitary house in the open fields which
were then near Clement's Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of
London ; and when they had all taken a great oath of secrecy,
Catesby told the rest what his plan was. They then went
up-stairs into a garret, and received the Sacrament from
Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said not to have known
actually of the Gunpowder plot, but who, I think, must have
had his suspicions that there was something desperate afoot.
Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had occasional
duties to perform about the Court, then kept at Whitehall, there
would be nothing suspicious in his living at Westminster. So,
having looked well about him, and having found a house to let,
the back of which joined the Parliament House, he hired it of a
person named Ferris, for the purpose of undermining the wall.
Having got possession of this house, the conspirators hired
another on the Lambeth side of the Thames, which they used
as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder, and other combustible
matters. These were to be removed at night (and afterwards
were removed), bit by bit, to the house at Westminster ; and,
that there might be some trusty person to keep watch over the
Lambeth stores, they admitted another conspirator, by name
Robert Kay, a very poor Catholic gentleman.
378 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
All these arrangements had been made some months, and it
was a dark wintry December night, when the conspirators, who
had been in the meantime dispersed to avoid observation, met
in the house at Westminster, and began to dig. They had laid
in a good stock of eatables, to avoid going in and out, and they
dug and dug with great ardour. But, the wall being tremend-
ously thick, and the work very severe, they took into their plot
Christopher Wright, a younger brother of John Wright,
that they might have a new pair of hands to help. And Chris-
topher Wright fell to like a fresh man, and they dug and dug
by night and by day, and Fawkes stood sentinel all the time.
And if any man's heart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes said,
" Gentlemen, we have abundance of powder and shot here, and
there is no fear of our being taken alive, even if discovered."
The same Fawkes, who, in the capacity of sentinel, was always
prowling about, soon picked up the intelligence that the King
had prorogued the Parliament again, from the seventh of
February, the day first fixed upon, until the third of October
When the conspirators knew this, they agreed to separate until
after the Christmas holidays, and to take no notice of each
other in the meanwhile, and never to write letters to one
another on any account. So, the house in Westminster was
shut up again, and I suppose the neighbours thought that those
strange-looking men who lived there so gloomily, and went
out so seldom, were gone away to have a merry Christmas
somewhere.
It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and five,
when Catesby met his fellow-conspirators again at this West-
minster house. He had now admitted three more : JOHN
Grant, a Warwickshire gentleman of a melancholy temper,
who lived in a doleful house near Stratford-upon-Avon, with a
frowning wall all round it, and a deep moat : ROBERT WINTER,
eldest brother of Thomas ; and Catesby's own servant, THOMAS
Bates, who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicion of what
his master was about. These three had all suffered more or
less for their religion in Elizabeth's time. And now, they all
began to dig again, and they dug and dug by night and by day.
They found it dismal work alone there, underground, with
such a fearful secret on their minds, and so many murders
JAMES THE FIRST 379
before them. They were filled with wild fancies. Sometimes,
they thought they heard a great bell tolling, deep down in the
earth under the Parliament House ; sometimes, they thought
they heard low voices muttering about the Gunpowder Plot ;
once in the morning, they really did hear a great rumbling
noise over their heads, as they dug and sweated in their mine.
Every man stopped and looked aghast at his neighbour, wonder-
ing what had happened, when that bold prowler, Fawkes, who
had been out to look, came in and told them that it was only a
dealer in coals who had occupied a cellar under the Parliament
House, removing his stock in trade to some other place. Upon
this, the conspirators, who with all their digging and digging
had not yet dug through the tremendously thick wall, changed
their plan ; hired that cellar, which was directly under the
House of Lords ; put six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in it,
and covered them over with fagots and coals. Then they all
dispersed again till September, when the following new con-
spirators were admitted : SiR Edward Baynham, Gloucester-
shire ; Sir Everard Digby, of Rutlandshire ; Ambrose
ROOKWOOD, of Suffolk ; Francis Tresham, of Northampton-
shire. Most of these were rich, and were to assist the plot,
some with money and some with horses on which the conspira-
tors were to ride through the country and rouse the Catholics
after the Parliament should be blown into the air.
Parliament being again prorogued from the third of October
to the fifth of November, and the conspirators being uneasy lest
their design should have been found out, Thomas Winters said
he would go up into the House of Lords on the day of the
prorogation, and see how matters looked. Nothing could be
better. The unconscious Commissioners were walking about
and talking to one another, just over the six-and-thirty barrels
of gunpowder. He came back and told the rest so, and they
went on with their preparations. They hired a ship, and kept
it ready in the Thames, in which Fawkes was to sail for
Flanders after firing with a slow match the train that was to
explode the powder. A number of Catholic gentlemen not
in the secret, were invited, on pretence of a hunting party, to
meet Sir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the fatal day, that
they might be ready to act together. And now all was ready.
38o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
But, now, the great wickedness and danger which had been
all along at the bottom of this wicked plot began to show itself.
As the fifth of November drew near, most of the conspirators,
remembering that they had friends and relations who would be
in the House of Lords that day, felt some natural relenting, and
a wish to warn them to keep away. They were not much
comforted by Catesby's declaring that in such a cause he would
blow up his own son. LORD MOUNTEAGLE, Tresham's brother-
in-law, was certain to be in the house ; and when Tresham
found that he could not prevail upon the rest to devise any
means of sparing their friends, he wrote a mysterious letter
to this lord and left it at his lodging in the dusk, urging him to
keep away from the opening of Parliament, " since God and
man had concurred to punish the wickedness of the times." It
contained the words "that the Parliament should receive a
terrible blow, and yet should not see who hurt them." And
it added, " the danger is past, as soon as you have burnt the
letter."
The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship, by
a direct miracle from Heaven, found out what this letter meant.
The truth is, that they were not long (as few men would be)
in finding out for themselves ; and it was decided to let the
conspirators alone, until the very day before the opening of
Parliament. That the conspirators had their fears, is certain ;
for, Tresham himself said before them all, that they were every
one dead men ; and, although even he did not take flight, there
is reason to suppose that he had warned other persons besides
Lord Mounteagle. However, they were all firm ; and Fawkes,
who was a man of iron, went down every day and night to keep
watch in the cellar as usual. He was there about two in the
afternoon of the fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain and Lord
Mounteagle threw open the door and looked in. " Who are
you, friend ? " said they. " Why," said Fawkes, " I am Mr
Percy's servant, and am looking after his store of fuel here."
" Your master has laid in a pretty good store," they returned,
and shut the door, and went away. Fawkes, upon this, posted
off to the other conspirators to tell them all was quiet, and went
back and shut himself up in the dark black cellar again, where
he heard the bell go twelve o'clock and usher in the fifth of
JAMES THE FIRST 381
November. About two hours afterwards, he slowly opened the
door, and came out to look about him in his old prowling way.
He was instantly seized and bound, by a party of soldiers under
Sir Thomas Knevett. He had a watch upon him, some
touchwood, some tinder, some slow matches ; and there was a
dark lantern with a candle in it, lighted, behind the door. He
had his boots and spurs on — to ride to the ship, I suppose — and
it was well for the soldiers that they took him so suddenly.
If they had left him but a moment's time to light a match, he
certainly would have tossed it in among the powder, and blown
up himself and them.
They took him to the King's bedchamber first of all, and
there the King (causing him to be held very tight, and keeping
a good way off), asked how he could have the heart to intend
to destroy so many innocent people ? " Because," said Guy
Fawkes, " desperate diseases need desperate remedies." To a
little Scotch favourite, with a face like a terrier, who asked him
(with no particular wisdom) why he had collected so much gun-
powder, he replied, because he had meant to blow Scotchmen
back to Scotland, and it would take a deal of powder to do that.
Next day he was carried to the Tower, but would make no
confession. Even after being horribly tortured, he confessed
nothing that the Government did not already know ; though he
must have been in a fearful state — as his signature, still pre-
served, in contrast with his natural handwriting before he was
put upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates, a
very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do with the
plot, and probably, under the torture, would as readily have
said anything. Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, made
confessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that was
heavy upon him. Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his
own horses all the way to Dunchurch, did not mount to escape
until the middle of the day, when the news of the plot was all
over London. On the road, he came up with the two Wrights,
Catesby, and Percy ; and they all galloped together into
Northamptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch, where they found
the proposed party assembled. Finding, however, that there
had been a plot, and that it had been discovered, the party dis-
appeared in the course of the night, and left them alone with
382 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Sir Everard Digby. Away they all rode again, through War-
wickshire and Worcestershire, to a house called Holbeach, on
the borders of Stafifordshire. They tried to raise the Catholics
on their way, but were indignantly driven off by them. All this
time they were hotly pursued by the sheriff of Worcester, and a
fast increasing concourse of riders. At last, resolving to defend
themselves at Holbeach, they shut themselves up in the house,
and put some wet powder before the fire to dry. But it blew
up, and Catesby was singed and blackened, and almost killed,
and some of the others were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that
they must die, they resolved to die there, and with only their
swords in their hands appeared at the windows to be shot at by
the sheriff and his assistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter,
after Thomas had been hit in the right arm which dropped
powerless by his side, " Stand by me, Tom, and we will die
together ! " — which they did, being shot through the body by
two bullets from one gun. John Wright, and Christopher
Wright, and Percy, were also shot. Rookwood and Digby were
taken : the former with a broken arm and a wound in his body
too.
It was the fifteenth of January, before the trial of Guy
Fawkes, and such of the other conspirators as were left alive,
came on. They were all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and
quartered : some in St Paul's Churchyard, on the top of Ludgate
Hill; some, before the Parliament House. A Jesuit priest,
named Henry Garnet, to whom the dreadful design was said
to have been communicated, was taken and tried ; and two of
his servants, as well as a poor priest who was taken with him,
were tortured without mercy. He himself was not tortured, but
was surrounded in the Tower by tamperers and traitors, and so
was made unfairly to convict himself out of his own mouth. He
said, upon his trial, that he had done all he could to prevent the
deed, and that he could not make public what had been told
him in confession — though I am afraid he knew of the plot in
other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after a manful
defence, and the Catholic Church made a saint of him ; some
rich and powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with the
project, were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber ;
the Catholics, in general, who had recoiled with horror from the
GUY FAWKES PREPARING THE SLOW MATCH
JAMES THE FIRST 385
idea of the infernal contrivance, were unjustly put under more
severe laws than before ; and this was the end of the Gunpowder
Plot.
Second Part
His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown the
House of Commons into the air himself; for, his dread and
jealousy of it knew no bounds all through his reign. When he
was hard pressed for money he was obliged to order it to meet,
as he could get no money without it ; and when it asked him
first to abolish some of the monopolies in necessaries of life
which were a great grievance to the people, and to redress other
public wrongs, he flew into a rage and got rid of it again. At
one time he wanted it to consent to the Union of England with
Scotland, and quarrelled about that. At another time it wanted
him to put down a most infamous Church abuse, called the
High Commission Court, and he quarrelled with it about that.
At another time it entreated him not to be quite so fond of his
archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his praise too
awful to be related, but to have some little consideration for the
poor Puritan clergy who were persecuted for preaching in their
own way, and not according to the archbishops and bishops ;
and they quarrelled about that. In short, what with hating the
House of Commons, and pretending not to hate it ; and what
with now sending some of its members who opposed him, to
Newgate or to the Tower, and now telling the rest that they
must not presume to make speeches about the public affairs
which could not possibly concern them; and what with cajoling,
and bullying, and frightening, and being frightened ; the House
of Commons was the plague of his Sowship's existence. It was
pretty firm, however, in maintaining its rights, and insisting
that the Parliament should make the laws, and not the King by
his own single proclamations (which he tried hard to do) ; and
his Sowship was so often distressed for money, in consequence,
that he sold every sort of title and public office as if they
were merchandise, and even invented a new dignity called a
Baronetcy, which anybody could buy for a thousand pounds.
These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and
2 B
386 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
his drinking, and his lying in bed — for he was a great sluggard
— occupied his Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time he
chiefly passed in hugging and slobbering his favourites. The
first of these was Sir Philip Herbert, who had no knowledge
whatever, except of dogs, and horses, and hunting, but whom he
soon made Earl or Montgomery. The next, and a much
more famous one, was ROBERT Carr, or Ker (for it is not
certain which was his right name), who came from the Border
country, and whom he soon made ViSCOUNT ROCHESTER,
and afterwards, EARL OF SOMERSET. The way in which his
Sowship doted on this handsome young man, is even more
odious to think of, than the way in which the really great men
of England condescended to bow down before him. The
favourite's great friend was a certain SiR THOMAS OvERBURY,
who wrote his love-letters for him, and assisted him in the
duties of his many high places, which his own ignorance pre-
vented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomas having
just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wicked
marriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a
divorce from her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in
her rage, got Sir Thomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned
him. Then the favourite and this bad woman were publicly
married by the King's pet bishop, with as much to-do and
rejoicing, as if he had been the best man, and she the best
woman, upon the face of the earth.
But, after a longer sunshine than might have been expected
— of seven years or so, that is to say — another handsome young
man started up and eclipsed the Earl of Somerset. This
was George Villiers, the youngest son of a Leicestershire
gentleman : who came to Court with all the Paris fashions on
him, and could dance as well as the best mountebank that ever
was seen. He soon danced himself into the good graces of his
Sowship, and danced the other favourite out of favour. Then,
it was all at once discovered that the Earl and Countess of
Somerset had not deserved all those great promotions and
mighty rejoicings, and they were separately tried for the
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But,
the King was so afraid of his late favourite's publicly telling
some disgraceful things he knew of him — which he darkly
JAMES THE FIRST 387
threatened to do — that he was even examined with two men
standing, one on either side of him, each with a cloak in his
hand, ready to throw it over his head and stop his mouth if he
should break out with what he had it in his power to tell. So,
a very lame affair was purposely made of the trial, and his
punishment was an allowance of four thousand pounds a year in
retirement, while the Countess was pardoned, and allowed to
pass into retirement too. They hated one another by this time,
and lived to revile and torment each other some years.
While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship
was making an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from
year to year, as is not often seen in any sty, three remarkable
deaths took place in England. The first was that of the Minister,
Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had
never been strong, being deformed from his birth. He said at
last that he had no wish to live ; and no Minister need have
had, with his experience of the meanness and wickedness of
those disgraceful times. The second was that of the Lady
Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship mightily, by privately
marrying WILLIAM SEYMOUR.son of LORD BEAUCHAMP.whowas
a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, and who, his Sowship
thought, might consequently increase and strengthen any claim
she might one day set up to the throne. She was separated
from her husband (who was put in the Tower) and thrust into
a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in a man's
dress to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to France,
but unhappily missed her husband, who had escaped too, and
was soon taken. She went raving mad in the miserable Tower,
and died there after four years. The last, and the most im-
portant of these three deaths, was that of Prince Henry, the
heir to the throne, in the nineteenth year of his age. He was
a promising young prince, and greatly liked ; a quiet, well-
conducted youth, of whom two very good things are known :
first, that his father was jealous of him ; secondly, that he was
the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing through all those
years in the Tower, and often said that no man but his father
would keep such a bird in such a cage. On the occasion of the
preparations for the marriage of his sister the Princess Elizabeth
with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage it turned out),
388 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
MUSKETEER OF JAMES I
he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill, to greet
his new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There he
played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though it was very
cold weather, and was seized with an alarming illness, and died
within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this young prince Sir
Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the Tower, the beginning
of a History of the World : a wonderful instance how little his
Sowship could do to confine a great man's mind, however long
he might imprison his body.
And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults,
but who never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity,
may bring me at once to the end of his sad story. After an
imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to
resume those old sea voyages of his, and to go to South America
in search of gold. His Sowship, divided between his wish to
be on good terms with the Spaniards through whose territory
Sir Walter must pass (he had long had an idea of marrying
JAMES THE FIRST 389
Prince Henry to a Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eager-
ness to get hold of the gold, did not know what to do. But, in
the end, he set Sir Walter free, taking securities for his return ;
and Sir Walter fitted out an expedition at his own cost, and,
on the twenty-eighth of March, one thousand six hundred and
seventeen, sailed away in command of one of its ships, which he
ominously called the Destiny. The expedition failed ; the
common men, not finding the gold they had expected,
mutinied ; a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and the
Spaniards, who hated him for old successes of his against them :
and he took and burnt a little town called Saint Thomas.
For this he was denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish
Ambassador as a pirate ; and returning almost broken-hearted,
with his hopes and fortunes shattered, his company of friends
dispersed, and his brave son (who had been one of them) killed,
he was taken — through the treachery of SiR LEWIS Stukely,
his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral — and was
once again immured in his prison-home of so many years.
His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting any
gold. Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as
many lies and evasions as the judges and law officers and every
other authority in Church and State habitually practised under
such a King. After a great deal of prevarication on all parts
but his own, it was declared that he must die under his former
sentence, now fifteen years old. So, on the twenty-eighth of
October, one thousand six hundred and eighteen, he was shut
up in the Gate House at Westminster to pass his last night on
earth, and there he took leave of his good and faithful lady who
was worthy to have lived in better days. At eight o'clock next
morning, after a cheerful breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup of
good wine, he was taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster,
where the scaffold was set up, and where so many people of
high degree were assembled to see him die, that it was a
matter of some difficulty to get him through the crowd. He
behaved most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his mind, it
was that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off ; and
he solemnly said that he had had no hand in bringing him to
the block, and that he had shed tears for him when he died.
As the morning was very cold, the Sheriff said, would he come
39° A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
down to a fire for a little space, and warm himself? But Sir
Walter thanked him, and said no, he would rather it were done
at once, for he was ill of fever and ague, and in another quarter
of an hour his shaking fit would come upon him if he were still
alive, and his enemies might then suppose that he trembled for
fear. With that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful and
Christian prayer. Before he laid his head upon the block he
felt the edge of the axe, and said, with a smile upon his face,
that it was a sharp medicine, but would cure the worst disease.
When he was bent down ready for death, he said to the
executioner, finding that he hesitated, "What dost thou fear?
Strike, man ! " So, the axe came down and struck his head off,
in the sixty-sixth year of his age.
The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount, he
was made Duke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he
was made Master of the Horse, he was made Lord High
Admiral — and the Chief Commander of the gallant English
forces that had dispersed the Spanish Armada, was displaced
to make room for him. He had the whole kingdom at his
disposal, and his mother sold all the profits and honours of the
State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all over with
diamonds and other precious stones, from his hatband and his
earrings to his shoes. Het he was an ignorant presumptuous
swaggering compound of knave and fool, with nothing but his
beauty and his dancing to recommend him. This is the
gentleman who called himself his Majesty's dog and slave, and
called his Majesty Your Sowship. His Sowship called him
Steenie ; it is supposed, because that was a nickname for
Stephen, and because St Stephen was generally represented in
pictures as a handsome saint.
His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his
trimming between the general dislike of the Catholic religion at
home, and his desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as his
only means of getting a rich princess for his son's wife : a part
of whose fortune he might cram into his greasy pockets.
Prince Charles — or as his Sowship called him. Baby Charles —
being now PRINCE OF Wales, the old project of a marriage
with the Spanish King's daughter had been revived for him ;
and as she could not marry a Protestant without leave from the
JAMES THE FIRST 391
Pope, his Sowship himself secretly and meanly wrote to his
Infallibility, asking for it. The negotiation for this Spanish
marriage takes up a larger space in great books, than you can
imagine, but the upshot of it all is, that when it had been held
off by the Spanish Court for a long time. Baby Charles and
Steenie set off in disguise as Mr Thomas Smith and Mr John
Smith, to see the Spanish Princess ; that Baby Charles
pretended to be desperately in love with her, and jumped off
walls to look at her, and made a considerable fool of himself in
a good many ways ; that she was called Princess of Wales, and
that the whole Spanish Court believed Baby Charles to be all
but dying for her sake, as he expressly told them he was ;
that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to England, and were
.received with as much rapture as if they had been a blessing to
it ; that Baby Charles had actually fallen in love with
Henrietta Maria, the French King's sister, whom he had
seen in Paris ; that he thought it a wonderfully fine and
princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, all through;
and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon as he was safe
and sound at home again, that the Spaniards were great fools
to have believed him.
Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite
complained that the people whom they had deluded were
dishonest. They made such misrepresentations of the treachery
of the Spaniards in this business of the Spanish match, that the
English nation became eager for a war with them. Although
the gravest Spaniards laughed at the idea of his Sowship in a
warlike attitude, the Parliament granted money for the
beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spain were
publicly declared to be at an end. The Spanish Ambassador in
London — probably with the help of the fallen favourite, the
Earl of Somerset — being unable to obtain speech with his
Sowship, slipped a paper into his hand, declaring that he was a
prisoner in his own house, and was entirely governed by
Buckingham and his creatures. The first effect of this letter
was that his Sowship began to cry and whine, and took Baby
Charles away from Steenie, and went down to Windsor, gabbling
all sorts of nonsense. The end of it was that his Sowship
hugged his dog and slave, and said he was quite satisfied
392 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited
power to settle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish
marriage ; and he now, with a view to the French one, signed a
treaty that all Roman Catholics in England should exercise
their religion freely, and should never be required to take any
oath contrary thereto. In return for this, and for other conces-
sions much less to be defended, Henrietta Maria was to become
the Prince's wife, and was to bring him a fortune of eight
hundred thousand crowns.
His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking
for the money, when the end of a gluttonous life came upon
him ; and, after a fortnight's illness, on Sunday the twenty-
seventh of March, one thousand six hundred and twenty-five, he
died. He had reigned twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine
years old. I know of nothing more abominable in history than
the adulation that was lavished on this King, and the vice and
corruption that such a barefaced habit of lying produced in his
court. It is much to be doubted whether one man of honour,
and not utterly self-disgraced, kept his place near James the
First. Lord Bacon, that able and wise philosopher, as the
First Judge in the Kingdom in this reign, became a public
spectacle of dishonesty and corruption ; and in his base flattery
of his Sowship, and in his crawling servility to his dog and
slave, disgraced himself even more. But, a creature like his
Sowship set upon a throne is like the Plague, and everybody
receives infection from him.
CHAPTER XXXIII
ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST
Baby Charles became King Charles the First, in the
twenty-fifth year of his age. Unlike his father, he was usually
amiable in his private character, and grave and dignified in his
bearing; but, like his father, he had monstrously exaggerated
notions of the rights of a king, and was evasive, and not to be
trusted. If his word could have been relied upon, his history
might have had a different end.
CHARLES THE FIRST
393
His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, Buck-
ingham, to bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his Queen ;
upon which occasion Buckingham — with his usual audacity —
made love to the young Queen of Austria, and was very indig-
nant indeed with Cardinal Richelieu, the French Minister, for
thwarting his intentions. The English people were very well
disposed to like their new Queen, and to receive her with great
favour when she came among them as a stranger. But, she held
the Protestant religion in great dislike, and brought over a
crowd of unpleasant priests, who made her do some very
ridiculous things, and forced themselves upon the public notice
in many disagreeable ways. Hence, the people soon came to
dislike her, and she soon came to dislike them ; and she did
so much all through this reign in setting the King (who was dot-
ingly fond of her) against his subjects, that it would have been
better for him if she had never been born.
Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First — of
his own determination to be a high and mighty King not to be
called to account by anybody, and urged on by his Queen
394 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
besides — deliberately set himself to put his Parliament down
and to put himself up. You are also to understand, that even
in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in itself to have ruined
any king) he never took a straight course, but always took a
crooked one.
He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the
House of Commons nor the people were quite clear as to the
justice of that war, now that they began to think a little more
about the story of the Spanish match. But the King rushed
into it hotly, raised money by illegal means to meet its
expenses, and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz, in the
very first year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz had been
made in the hope of plunder, but as it was not successful, it was
necessary to get a grant of money from the Parliament ; and
when they met, in no very complying humour, the King told
them, " to make haste to let him have it, or it would be the
worse for themselves." Not put in a more complying humour
by this, they impeached the King's favourite, the Duke of
Buckingham, as the cause (which he undoubtedly was) of many
great public grievances and wrongs. The King, to save him,
dissolved the Parliament without getting the money he wanted ;
and when the Lords implored him to consider and grant a little
delay, he replied, " No, not one minute." He then began to
raise money for himself by the following means among others.
He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage which
had not been granted by the Parliament, and could lawfully be
levied by no other power ; he called upon the seaport towns to
furnish, and to pay all the cost for three months of, a fleet of
armed ships ; and he required the people to unite in lending
him large sums of money, the repayment of which was very
doubtful. If the poor people refused, they were pressed as
soldiers or sailors ; if the gentry refused, they were sent to
prison. Five gentlemen, named SiR THOMAS DARNEL, JOHN
Corbet, Walter Earl, John Heveningham, and Everard
Hampden, for refusing were taken up by a warrant of the King's
privy council, and were sent to prison without any cause but the
King's pleasure being stated for their imprisonment. Then the
question came to be solemnly tried, whether this was not a
violation of Magna Charta, and an encroachment by the King
CHARLES THE FIRST 395
on the highest rights of the English people. His lawyers con-
tended No, because to encroach upon the rights of the English
people would be to do wrong, and the King could do no wrong.
The accommodating judges decided in favour of this wicked
nonsense ; and here was a fatal division between the King and
the people.
For all this, it became necessary to call another Parliament.
The people, sensible of the danger in which their liberties were,
chose for it those who were best known for their determined
opposition to the King ; but still the King, quite blinded by his
determination to carry everything before him, addressed them
when they met, in a contemptuous manner, and just told them
in so many words that he had only called them together because
he wanted money. The Parliament, strong enough and resolute
enough to know that they would lower his tone, cared little for
what he said, and laid before him one of the great documents of
history, which is called the PETITION OF RIGHT, requiring that
the free men of England should no longer be called upon to
lend the King money, and should no longer be pressed or im-
prisoned for refusing to do so; further, that the free men of
England should no longer be seized by the King's special
mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their rights and
liberties and the laws of their country. At first the King
returned an answer to this petition, in which be tried to shirk
it altogether ; but, the House of Commons then showing their
determination to go on with the impeachment of Buckingham,
the King in alarm returned an answer, giving his consent to all
that was required of him. He not only afterwards departed
from his word and honour on these points, over and over again,
but, at this very time, he did the mean and dissembling act of
publishing his first answer and not his second — merely that the
people might suppose that the Parliament had not got the better
of him.
That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded
vanity, had by this time involved the country in war with
France, as well as with Spain. For such miserable causes
and such miserable creatures are wars sometimes made! But
he was destined to do little more mischief in this world. One,
morning, as he was going out of his house to his carriage, he
396 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
turned to speak to a certain Colonel FRYER who was with him ;
and he was violently stabbed with a knife, which the murderer
left sticking in his heart. This happened in his hall. He had
had angry words up-stairs, just before, with some French gentle-
men, who were immediately suspected by his servants, and had
a close escape from being set upon and killed. In the midst of
the noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the kitchen and
might easily have got away, drew his sword and cried out, " I
am the man ! " His name was JOHN Felton, a Protestant and
a retired officer in the army. He said he had had no personal
ill-will to the Duke, but had killed him as a curse to the
country. He had aimed his blow well, for Buckingham had only
had time to cry out, " Villain ! " and then he drew out the knife,
fell against a table, and died.
The council made a mighty business of examining John
Felton about this murder, though it was a plain case enough,
one would think. He had come seventy miles to do it, he told
them, and he did it for the reason he had declared ; if they
put him upon the rack, as that noble MARQUIS OF DORSET
whom he saw before him, had the goodness to threaten, he gave
that marquis warning, that he would accuse ^/V« as his accomplice!
The King was unpleasantly anxious to have him racked, never-
theless ; but as the judges now found out that torture was con-
trary to the law of England — it is a pity they did not make the
discovery a little sooner — John Felton was simply executed for
the murder he had done. A murder it undoubtedly was, and
not in the least to be defended : though he had freed England
from one of the most profligate, contemptible, and base court
favourites to whom it has ever yielded.
A very different man now arose. This was SiR THOMAS
Wentworth, a Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parlia-
ment for a long time, and who had favoured arbitrary and
haughty principles, but who had gone over to the people's side
on receiving offence from Buckingham. The King, much want-
ing such a man — for, besides being naturally favourable to the
King's cause, he had great abilities — made him first a Baron,
and then a Viscount, and gave him high employment, and won
him most completely.
A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was not to
CHARLES THE FIRST 397
be won. On the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred
and twenty-nine, SiR John Eliot, a great man who had been
active in the Petition of Right, brought forward other strong
resolutions against the King's chief instruments, and called upon
the Speaker to put them to the vote. To this the Speaker
answered, "he was commanded otherwise by the King," and
got up to leave the chair — which, according to the rules of the
House of Commons would have obliged it to adjourn without
doing anything more — when two members, named Mr HOLLIS
and Mr VALENTINE, held him down. A scene of great con-
fusion arose among the members ; and while many swords were
drawn and flashing about, the King, who was kept informed of
all that was going on, told the captain of his guard to go down
to the House and force the doors. The resolutions were by that
time, however, voted, and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot
and those two members who had held the Speaker down, were
quickly summoned before the council. As they claimed it to
be their privilege not to answer out of Parliament for anything
they had said in it, they were committed to the Tower. The
King then went down and dissolved the Parliament, in a speech
wherein he made mention of these gentlemen as "Vipers" —
which did not do him much good that ever I have heard of.
As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were
sorry for what they had done, the King, always remarkably
unforgiving, never overlooked their offence. When they
demanded to be brought up before the Court of King's Bench,
he even resorted to the meanness of having them moved about
from prison to prison, so that the writs issued for that purpose
should not legally find them. At last they came before the
court and were sentenced to heavy fines, and to be imprisoned
during the King's pleasure. When Sir John Eliot's health had
quite given way, and he so longed for change of air and scene
as to petition for his release, the King sent back the answer
(worthy of his Sowship himself) that the petition was not
humble enough. When he sent another petition by his young
son, in which he pathetically offered to go back to prison when
his health was restored, if he might be released for its recovery,
the King still disregarded it. When he died in the Tower, and
his children petitioned to be allowed to take his body down to
398 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
Cornwall, there to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the
King returned for answer, " Let Sir John Eliot's body be buried
in the church of that parish where he died." All this was like a
very little King indeed, I think.
And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his design
of setting himself up and putting the people down, the King
called no Parliament ; but ruled without one. If twelve thous-
and volumes were written in his praise (as a good many have
been) it would still remain a fact, impossible to be denied, that
for twelve years King Charles the first reigned in England
unlawfully and despotically, seized upon his subjects' goods and
money at his pleasure, and punished according to his unbridled
will all who ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion with some
people to think that this King's career was cut short ; but I
must say myself that I think he ran a pretty long one.
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King's
right-hand man in the religious part of the putting down of the
people's liberties. Laud, who was a sincere man, of large learn-
ing but small sense — for the two things sometimes go together
in very different quantities — though a Protestant, held opinions
so near those of the Catholics, that the Pope wanted to make a
Cardinal of him, if he would have accepted that favour. He
looked upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, and so forth,
as amazingly important in religious ceremonies ; and he brought
in an immensity of bowing and candle-snuffing. He also
regarded archbishops and bishops as a sort of miraculous
persons, and was inveterate in the last degree against any who
thought otherwise. Accordingly, he offered up thanks to
Heaven, and was in a state of much pious pleasure, when a
Scotch clergyman named Leighton, was pilloried, whipped,
branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears cut off and one of
his nostrils slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the inventions
of men. He originated on a Sunday morning the prosecution
of William Prynne, a barrister who was of similar opinions,
and who was fined a thousand pounds ; who was pilloried ; who
had his ears cut off on two occasions — one ear at a time — and
who was imprisoned for life. He highly approved of the
punishment of Doctor Bastwick, a physician ; who was also
fined a thousand pounds ; and who afterwards had kis ears cut
CHARLES THE FIRST 399
ofif, and was imprisoned for life. These were gentle methods
of persuasion, some will tell you : I think, they were rather
calculated to be alarming to the people.
In the money part of the putting down of the people's
liberties, the King was equally gentle, as some will tell you :
as I think, equally alarming. He levied those duties of tonnage
and poundage, and increased them as he thought fit. He
granted monopolies to companies of merchants on their paying
him for them, notwithstanding the great complaints that had,
for years and years, been made on the subject of monopolies.
He fined the people for disobeying proclamations issued by
his Sowship in direct violation of law. He revived the detested
Forest laws, and took private property to himself as his forest
right. Above all, he determined to have what was called Ship
Money ; that is to say, money for the support of the fleet — not
only from the seaports, but from all the counties of England :
having found out that, in some ancient time or other, all the
counties paid it. The grievance of this ship money being
somewhat too strong, JOHN CHAMBERS, a citizen of London,
refused to pay his part of it. For this the Lord Mayor ordered
John Chambers to prison, and for that John Chambers brought
a suit against the Lord Mayor. LORD Say, also, behaved like
a real nobleman, and declared he would not pay. But, the
sturdiest and best opponent of the ship money was JOHN
Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat
among the "vipers" in the House of Commons when there
was such a thing, and who had been the bosom friend of Sir
John Eliot. This case was tried before the twelve judges in
the Court of Exchequer, and again the King's lawyers said it
was impossible that ship money could be wrong, because the
King could do no wrong, however hard he tried — and he really
did try very hard during these twelve years. Seven of the
judges said that was quite true, and Mr Hampden was bound
to pay : five of the judges said that was quite false, and
Mr Hampden was not bound to pay. So, the King triumphed
(as he thought), by making Hampden the most popular man
in England ; where matters were getting to that height now,
that many honest Englishmen could not endure their country,
and sailed away across the seas to found a colony in Massa-
400 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
chusetts Bay in America. It is said that Hampden himself and
his relation Oliver Cromwell were going with a company of
such voyagers, and were actually on board ship, when they were
stopped by a proclamation, prohibiting sea captains to carry out
such passengers without the royal license. But O! it would
have been well for the King if he had let them go !
This was the state of England. If Laud had been a madman
just broke loose, he could not have done more mischief than he
did in Scotland. In his endeavours (in which he was seconded
by the King, then in person in that part of his dominions) to
force his own ideas of bishops, and his own religious forms and
ceremonies, upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a perfect
frenzy. They formed a solemn league, which they called The
Covenant, for the preservation of their own religious forms;
they rose in arms throughout the whole country; they sum-
moned all their men to prayers and sermons twice a day by
beat of drum ; they sang psalms, in which they compared their
enemies to all the evil spirits that were ever heard of; and they
solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. At first the
King tried force, then treaty, then a Scottish Parliament which
did not answer at all. Then he tried the EARL OF STRAFFORD,
formerly Sir Thomas Wentworth, who, as LORD Wentworth,
had been governing Ireland. He, too, had carried it with a
very high hand there, though to the benefit and prosperity of
that country,
Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish people
by force of arms. Other lords who were taken into council,
recommended that a Parliament should at last be called ; to
which the King unwillingly consented. So, on the thirteenth
of April, one thousand six hundred and forty, that then strange
sight, a Parliament, was seen at Westminster. It is called
the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very little while. While
the members were all looking at one another, doubtful who
would dare to speak, Mr Pym arose and set forth all that
the King had done unlawfully during the past twelve years,
and what was the position to which England was reduced. This
great example set, other members took courage and spoke the
truth freely, though with great patience and moderation. The
King, a little frightened, sent to say that if they would grant
CROMWELL AND HAMPDEN
2 C
CHARLES THE FIRST 403
him a certain sum on certain terms, no more ship money should
be raised. They debated the matter for two days ; and then, as
they would not give him all he asked without promise or inquiry,
he dissolved them.
But they knew very well that he must have a Parliament
now ; and he began to make that discovery too, though rather
late in the day. Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of September,
being then at York with an army collected against the Scottish
people, but his own men sullen and discontented like the rest of
the nation, the King told the great council of the Lords, whom
he had called to meet him there, that he would summon another
Parliament to assemble on the third of November. The soldiers
of the Covenant had now forced their way into England and
had taken possession of the northern counties, where the coals
are got. As it would never do to be without coals, and as the
King's troops could make no head against the Covenanters so
full of gloomy zeal, a truce was made, and a treaty with Scot-
land was taken into consideration. Meanwhile the northern
counties paid the Covenanters to leave the coals alone, and
keep quiet.
We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We have
next to see what memorable things were done by the Long one.
Second Part
The Long Parliamen^ssembled on the third of November, one
thousand six hundred and forty-one. That day week the Earl
of Strafford arrived from York, very sensible that the spirited
and determined men who formed that Parliament were no
friends towards him, who had not only deserted the cause of the
people, but who had on all occasions opposed himself to their
liberties. The King told him, for his comfort, that the Parlia-
ment " should not hurt one hair of his head." But, on the very
next day Mr Pym, in the House of Commons, and with great
solemnity, impeached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. He
was immediately taken into custody and fell from his proud
height.
It was the twenty-second of March before he was brought to
404 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
trial at Westminster Hall ; where, although he was very ill and
suffered great pain, he defended himself with such ability and
majesty, that it was doubtful whether he would not get the best
of it. But on the thirteenth day of the trial, Pym produced in
the House of Commons a copy of some notes of a council, found
by young SiR HARRY Vane in a red velvet cabinet belonging
to his father (Secretary Vane, who sat at the council-table with
the Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly told the King that
he was free from all rules and obligations of government, and
might do with his people whatever he liked ; and in which he had
added — " You have an army in Ireland that you may employ to
reduce this kingdom to obedience." It was not clear whether
by the words " this kingdom," he had really meant England or
Scotland ; but the Parliament contended that he meant Eng-
land, and this was treason. At the same sitting of the House
of Commons it was resolved to bring in a bill of attainder
declaring the treason to have been committed : in preference to
proceeding with the trial by impeachment, which would have
required the treason to be proved.
So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried through the
House of Commons by a large majority, and was sent up to
the House of Lords. While it was still uncertain whether the
House of Lords would pass it and the King consent to it, Pym
disclosed to the House of Commons that the King and Queen
had both been plotting with the ofiScers of the army to bring up
the soldiers and control the Parliament, and also to introduce
two hundred soldiers into the Tower of London to effect the
Earl's escape. The plotting with the army was revealed by one
George Goring, the son of a lord of that name ; a bad fellow
who was one of the original plotters, and turned traitor. The
King had actually given his warrant for the admission of
the two hundred men into the Tower, and they would have
got in too, but for the refusal of the governor — a sturdy
Scotchman of the name of Balfour — to admit them. These
matters being made public, great numbers of people began
to riot outside the Houses of Parliament, and to cry out
for the execution of the Earl of Strafford, as one of the King's
chief instruments against them. The bill passed the House
of Lords while the people were in this state of agitation, and
CHARLES THE FIRST 405
was laid before the King for his assent, together with another
bill declaring that the Parliament then assembled should not be
dissolved or adjourned without their own consent. The King —
not unwilling to save a faithful servant, though he had no great
attachment for him — was in some doubt what to do ; but he
gave his consent to both bills, although he in his heart believed
that the bill against the Earl of Strafford was unlawful and
unjust. The Earl had written to him, telling him that he was
willing to die for his sake. But he had not expected that his
royal master would take him at his word quite so readily ; for,
when he heard his doom, he laid his hand upon his heart, and
said, " Put not your trust in Princes ! "
The King, who never could be straightforward and plain,
through one single day or through one single sheet of paper,
wrote a letter to the Lords, and sent it by the young Prince of
Wales, entreating them to prevail with the Commons that " that
unfortunate man should fulfil the natural course of his life in a
close imprisonment." In a postscript to the very same letter,
he added, " If he must die, it were charity to reprieve him till
Saturday." If there had been any doubt of his fate, this weak-
ness and meanness would have settled it. The very next day,
which was the twelfth of May, he was brought out to be beheaded
on Tower Hill.
Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having people's
ears cropped off and their noses slit, was now confined in the
Tower too ; and when the Earl went by his window to his
death, he was there, at his request, to give him his blessing.
They had been great friends in the King's cause, and the Earl
had written to him in the days of their power that he thought
it would be an admirable thing to have Mr Hampden publicly
whipped for refusing to pay the ship money. However, those
high and mighty doings were over now, and the Earl went
his way to death with dignity and heroism. The governor
wished him to get into a coach at the Tower gate, for fear the
people should tear him to pieces ; but he said it was all one to
him whether he died by the axe or by the people's hands. So,
he walked, with a firm tread and a stately look, and sometimes
pulled off his hat to them as he passed along. They were
profoundly quiet. He made a speech on the scaffold from some
4o6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
notes he had prepared (the paper was found lying there after
his head was struck off), and one blow of the axe killed him, in
the forty-ninth year of his age.
This bold and daring act, the Parliament accompanied by
other famous measures, all originating (as even this did) in the
King's having so grossly and so long abused his power. The
name of DELINQUENTS was applied to all sheriffs and other
officers who had been concei'ned in raising the ship money, or
any other money, from the people, in an unlawful manner ; the
Hampden judgment was reversed ; the judges who had decided
against Hampden were called upon to give large securities that
they would take such consequences as Parliament might impose
upon them ; and one was arrested as he sat in High Court, and
carried off to prison. Laud was impeached ; the unfortunate
victims whose ears had been cropped and whose noses had been
slit, were brought out of prison in triumph; and a bill was
passed declaring that a Parliament should be called every third
year, and that if the King and the King's officers did not call it,
the people should assemble of themselves and summon it, as of
their own right and power. Great illuminations and rejoicings
took place over all these things, and the country was wildly
excited. That the Parliament took advantage of this excite-
ment and stirred them up by every means, there is no doubt ;
but you are always to remember those twelve long years,
during which the King had tried so hard whether he really
could do any wrong or not.
All this time there was a great religious outcry against the
right of the Bishops to sit in Parliament ; to which the Scottish
people particularly objected. The English were divided on this
subject, and, partly on this account and partly because they had
had foolish expectations that the Parliament would be able
to take off nearly all the taxes, numbers of them sometimes
wavered and inclined towards the King.
I believe myself, that if, at this or almost any other period
of his life, the King could have been trusted by any man not
out of his senses, he might have saved himself and kept his
throne. But, on the English army being disbanded, he plotted
with the officers again, as he had done before, and established
the fact beyond all doubt by putting his signature of approval
CHARLES THE FIRST 407
to a petition against the Parliamentary leaders, which was
drawn up by certain officers. When the Scottish army was
disbanded, he went to Edinburgh in four days — which was
going very fast at that time — to plot again, and so darkly, too,
that it is difficult to decide what his whole object was. Some
suppose that he wanted to gain over the Scottish Parliament, as
he did in fact gain over, by presents and favours, many Scottish
lords and men of power. Some think that he went to get
proofs against the Parliamentary leaders in England of their
having treasonably invited the Scottish people to come and
help them. With whatever object he went to Scotland, he did
little good by going. At the instigation of the Earl of
Montrose, a desperate man who was then in prison for
plotting, he tried to kidnap three Scottish lords who escaped.
A committee of the Parliament at home, who had followed to
watch him, writing an account of this Incident, as it was
called, to the Parliament, the Parliament made a fresh stir
about it ; were, or feigned to be, much alarmed for themselves ;
and wrote to the Earl of Essex, the commander-in-chief, for
a guard to protect them.
It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in Ireland
besides, but it is very probable that he did, and that the Queen
did, and that he had some wild hope of gaining the Irish people
over to his side by favouring a rise among them. Whether or
no, they did rise in a most brutal and savage rebellion ; in
which, encouraged by their priests, they committed such
atrocities upon numbers of the English, of both sexes and of
all ages, as nobody could believe, but for their being related on
oath by eye-witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or two
hundred thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak,
is uncertain ; but, that it was as ruthless and barbarous an
outbreak as ever was known among any savage people, is
certain.
The King came home from Scotland, determined to make a
great struggle for his lost power. He believed that, through
his presents and favours, Scotland would take no part against
him ; and the Lord Mayor of London received him with such a
magnificent dinner that he thought he must have become
popular again in England. It would take a good many Lord
4o8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Mayors, however, to make a people, and the King soon found
himself mistaken.
Not so soon, though, but that there was a great opposition
in the Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth by Pym and
Hampden and the rest, called " The Remonstrance," which
set forth all the illegal acts that the King had ever done, but
politely laid the blame of them on his bad advisers. Even when
it was passed and presented to him, the King still thought him-
self strong enough to discharge Balfour from his command in
the Tower, and to put in his place a man of bad character ; to
whom the Commons instantly objected, and whom he was
obliged to abandon. At this time, the old outcry about the
Bishops became louder than ever, and the old Archbishop of
York was so near being murdered as he went down to the House
of Lords — being laid hold of by the mob and violently knocked
about, in return for very foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was
yelping out " No Bishops ! " — that he sent for all the Bishops
who were in town, and proposed to them to sign a declaration
that, as they could no longer without danger to their lives attend
their duty in Parliament, they protested against the lawfulness
of everything done in their absence. This they asked the King
to send to the House of Lords, which he did. Then the House
of Commons impeached the whole party of Bishops and sent
them off to the Tower.
Taking no warning from this ; but encouraged by there being
a moderate party in the Parliament who objected to these strong
measures, the King, on the third of January, one thousand six
hundred and forty-two, took the rashest step that ever was taken
by mortal man.
Of his own accord and without advice, he sent the Attorney-
General to the House of Lords, to accuse of treason certain
members of Parliament who as popular leaders were the most
obnoxious to him ; LORD KiMBOLTON, SiR ARTHUR Hasel-
RIG, Denzil Hollis, John Pym (they used to call him King
Pym, he possessed such power and looked so big), John
Hampden, and William Strode. The houses of those
members he caused to be entered, and their papers to be sealed
up. At the same time, he sent a messenger to the House of
Commons demanding to have the five gentlemen who were
CHARLES THE FIRST 409
members of that House immediately produced. To this the
House replied th^.t they should appear as soon as there was any
legal charge against them, and immediately adjourned.
Next day, the House of Commons send into the City to let
the Lord Mayor know that their privileges are invaded by the
King, and that there is no safety for anybody or anything.
Then, when the five members are gone out of the way, down
comes the King himself, with all his guard and from two to
three hundred gentlemen and soldiers, of whom the greater part
were armed. These he leaves in the hall ; and then, with his
nephew at his side, goes into the House, takes off his hat, and
walks up to the Speaker's chair. The Speaker leaves it, the
King stands in front of it, looks about him steadily for a little
while, and says he has come for those five members. No one
speaks, and then he calls John Pym by name. No one speaks,
and then he calls Denzil Hollis by name. No one speaks, and
then he asks the Speaker of the House where those five members
are ? The Speaker, answering on his knee, nobly replies that
he is the servant of that House, and that he has neither eyes
to see, nor tongue to speak, anything but what the House
commands him. Upon this, the King, beaten from that time
evermore, replies that he will seek them himself, for they have
committed treason ; and goes out with his hat in his hand, amid
some audible murmurs from the members.
No words can describe the hurry that arose out of doors
when all this was known. The five members had gone for
safety to a house in Coleman Street, in the City, where they
were guarded all night ; and indeed the whole city watched in
arms like an army. At ten o'clock in the morning, the King,
already frightened at what he had done, came to the Guildhall,
with only half a dozen lords, and made a speech to the people,
hoping they would not shelter those whom he accused of treason.
Next day, he issued a proclamation for the apprehension of the
five members ; but the Parliament minded it so little that they
made great arrangements for having them brought down to
Westminster in great state, five days afterwards. The King
was so alarmed now at his own imprudence, if not for his own
safety, that he left his palace at Whitehall, and went away with
his Queen and children to Hampton Court.
41 o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
It was the eleventh of May, when the five members were
carried in state and triumph to Westminster. They were taken
by water. The river could not be seen for the boats on it ; and
the five members were hemmed in by barges full of men and
great guns, ready to protect them, at any cost. Along the
Strand a large body of the train-bands of London, under their
commander, Skippon, marched to be ready to assist the little
fleet. Beyond them, came a crowd who choked the streets,
roaring incessantly about the Bishops and the Papists, and crying
out contemptuously as they passed Whitehall, " What has be-
come of the King ? " With this great noise outside the House
of Commons, and with great silence within, Mr Pym rose and
informed the House of the great kindness with which they had
been received in the City. Upon that, the House called the
sheriffs in and thanked them, and requested the train-bands,
under their commander Skippon, to guard the House of Com-
mons every day. Then came four thousand men on horseback
out of Buckinghamshire, offering their services as a guard too,
and bearing a petition to the King, complaining of the injury
that had been done to Mr Hampden, who was their county man
and much beloved and honoured.
When the King set off for Hampton Court, the gentlemen
and soldiers who had been with him followed him out of town
as far as Kingston-upon-Thames ; next day. Lord Digby came to
them from the King at Hampton Court, in his coach and six, to
inform them that the King accepted their protection. This, the
Parliament said, was making war against the kingdom, and Lord
Digby fled abroad. The Parliament then immediately applied
themselves to getting hold of the military power of the country,
well knowing that the King was already trying hard to use it
against them, and that he had secretly sent the Earl of New-
castle to Hull, to secure a valuable magazine of arms and gun-
powder that was there. In those times, every county had its own
magazines of arms and powder, for its own train-bands or
militia ; so, the Parliament brought in a bill claiming the right
(which up to this time had belonged to the King) of appointing
the Lord Lieutenants of counties, who commanded these train-
bands ; also, of having all the forts, castles, and garrisons in the
kingdom, put into the hands of such governors as they, the
CHARLES THE FIRST 41 1
Parliament, could confide in. It also passed a law depriving
the Bishops of their votes. The King gave his assent to that
bill, but would not abandon the right of appointing the Lord
Lieutenants, though he said he was willing to appoint such as
might be suggested to him by the Parliament. When the Earl
of Pembroke asked him whether he would not give way on that
question for a time, he said, " By God ! not for one hour ! " and
upon this he and the Parliament went to war.
His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of Orange.
On pretence of taking her to the country of her future husband,
the Queen was already got safely away to Holland, there to
pawn the Crown jewels for money to raise an army on the King's
side. The Lord Admiral being sick, the House of Commons now
named the Earl of Warwick to hold his place for a year. The
King named another gentleman ; the House of Commons took
its own way, and the Earl of Warwick became Lord Admiral
without the King's consent. The Parliament sent orders down
to Hull to have that magazine removed to London ; the King
went down to Hull to take it himself The citizens would not
admit him into the town, and the governor would not admit
him into the castle. The Parliament resolved that whatever
the two Houses passed, and the King would not consent to,
should be called an Ordinance, and should be as much a law
as if he did consent to it. The King protested against this, and
gave notice that these ordinances were not to be obeyed. The
King, attended by the majority of the House of Peers, and by-
many members of the House of Commons, established himself
at York. The Chancellor went to him with the Great Seal, and
the Parliament made a new Great Seal. The Queen sent over
a ship full of arms and ammunition, and the King issued letters
to borrow money at high interest. The Parliament raised
twenty regiments of foot and seventy -five troops of horse ; and
the people willingly aided them with their money, plate,
jewellery, and trinkets — the married women even with their
wedding-rings. Every member of Parliament who could raise
a troop or a regiment in his own part of the country, dressed it
according to his taste and in his own colours, and commanded
it. Foremost among them all, Oliver Cromwell raised a
troop of horse — thoroughly in earnest and thoroughly well
412 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
armed — who were, perhaps, the best soldiers that ever were
seen.
In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament passed
the bounds of previous law and custom, yielded to and favoured
riotous assemblages of the people, and acted tyrannically in
imprisoning some who differed from the popular leaders. But
again, you are always to remember that the twelve years during
which the King had had his own wilful way, had gone before ;
and that nothing could make the times what they might, could,
would, or should have been, if those twelve years had never
rolled away.
Third Part
I SHALL not try to relate the particulars of the great civil war
between King Charles the First and the Long Parliament, which
lasted nearly four years, and a full account of which would fill
many large books. It was a sad thing that Englishmen should
once more be fighting against Englishmen on English ground ;
but, it is some consolation to know that on both sides there was
great humanity, forbearance, and honour. The soldiers of the
Parliament were far more remarkable for these good qualities
than the soldiers of the King (many of whom fought for mere
pay without much caring for the cause); but those of the
nobility and gentry who were on the King's side were so brave,
and so faithful to him, that their conduct cannot but command
our highest admiration. Among them were great numbers of
Catholics, who took the royal side because the Queen was so
strongly of their persuasion.
The King might have distinguished some of these gallant
spirits, if he had been as generous a spirit himself, by giving
them the command of his army. Instead of that, however, true
to his old high notions of royalty, he entrusted it to his two
nephews, PRINCE Rupert and Prince Maurice, who were of
royal blood and came over from abroad to help him. It might
have been better for him if they had stayed away ; since Prince
Rupert was an impetuous, hot-headed fellow, whose only idea
was to dash into battle at all times and seasons, and lay about him.
CHARLES THE FIRST
413
The general-in-chief of the
Parliamentary army was the
Earl of Essex, a gentleman
of honour and an excellent
soldier. A little while before
the war broke out, there had
been some rioting at West-
minster between certain
officious law students and
noisy soldiers, and the shop-
keepers and their apprentices,
and the general people in the
streets. At that time the
King's friends called the
crowd, Roundheads, because
the apprentices wore short
hair ; the crowd, in return,
called their opponents Cava-
liers, meaning that they were
a blustering set, who pre-
tended to be very military.
These two words now began
to be used to distinguish the
two sides in the civil war.
The Royalists also called the
Parliamentary men Rebels
and Rogues, while the Parlia-
mentary men called them
Malignants, and spoke of
themselves as the Godly, the
Honest, and so forth.
The war broke out at
Portsmouth, where that double
traitor Goring had again gone
over to the King and was
besieged by the Parliamentary
troops. Upon this, the King
proclaimed the Earl of Essex
and the officers serving under
A Cavalier of Charles I
414 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
him, traitors, and called upon his loyal subjects to meet him in
arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of August. But his loyal
subjects came about him in scanty numbers, and it was a windy,
gloomy day, and the Royal Standard got blown down, and the
whole affair was very melancholy. The chief engagements after
this, took place in the vale of the Red Horse near Banbury, at
Brentford, at Devizes, at Chalgrave Field (where Mr Hampden
was so sorely wounded while fighting at the head of his men,
that he died within a week), at Newbury (in which battle LORD
Falkland, one of the best noblemen on the King's side, was
killed), at Leicester, at Naseby, at Winchester, at Marston Moor
near York, at Newcastle, and in many other parts of England
and Scotland. These battles were attended with various
successes. At one time, the King was victorious ; at another
time, the Parliament. But almost all the great and busy towns
were against the King ; and when it was considered necessary
to fortify London, all ranks of people, from labouring men and
women, up to lords and ladies, worked hard together with
heartiness and goodwill. The most distinguished leaders on
the Parliamentary side were HAMPDEN, SiR Thomas Fairfax,
and, above all, Oliver Cromwell, and his son-in-law Ireton.
During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it was
very expensive and irksome, and to whom it was made the
more distressing by almost every family being divided — some
of its members attaching themselves to one side and some to
the other — were over and over again most anxious for peace.
So were some of the best men in each cause. Accordingly,
treaties of peace were discussed between commissioners from
the Parliament and the King ; at York, at Oxford (where the
King held a little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge.
But they came to nothing. In all these negotiations, and in all
his difficulties, the King showed himself at his best. He was
courageous, cool, self-possessed, and clever; but, the old taint
of his character was always in him, and he was never for one
single moment to be trusted. Lord Clarendon, the historian,
one of his highest admirers, supposes that he had unhappily
promised the Queen never to make peace without her consent,
and that this must often be taken as his excuse. He never
kept his word from night to morning. He signed a cessation of
CHARLES THE FIRST 415
hostilities with the blood-stained Irish rebels for a sum of
money, and invited the Irish regiments over, to help him against
the Parliament. In the battle of Naseby, his cabinet was seized
and was found to contain a correspondence with the Queen, in
which he expressly told her that he had deceived the Parliament
— a mongrel Parliament, he called it now, as an improvement
on his old term of vipers — in pretending to recognise it and to
treat with it ; and from which it further appeared that he had
long been in secret treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a
foreign army of ten thousand men. Disappointed in this, he
sent a most devoted friend of his, the Earl OF GLAMORGAN,
to Ireland, to conclude a secret treaty with the Catholic powers,
to send him an Irish army of ten thousand men ; in return for
which he was to bestow great favours on the Catholic religion.
And, when this treaty was discovered in the carriage of a
fighting Irish Archbishop, who was killed in one of the many
skirmishes of those days, he basely denied and deserted his
attached friend, the Earl, on his being charged with high
treason ; and — even worse than this — had left blanks in the
secret instructions he gave him with his own kingly hand,
expressly that he might thus save himself.
At last, on the twenty-seventh day of April, one thousand
six hundred and forty-six, the King found himself in the city of
Oxford, so surrounded by the Parliamentary army who were
closing in upon him on all sides, that he felt that if he would
escape he must delay no longer. So, that night, having altered
the cut of his hair and beard, he was dressed up as a servant
and put upon a horse with a cloak strapped behind him, and
rode out of the town behind one of his own faithful followers,
with a clergyman of that country, who knew the road well, for a
guide. He rode towards London as far as Harrow, and then
altered his plans and resolved, it would seem, to go to the
Scottish camp. The Scottish men had been invited over to
help the Parliamentary army, and had a large force then in
England. The King was so desperately intriguing in everything
he did, that it is doubtful what he exactly meant by this step.
He took it, anyhow, and delivered himself up to the Earl of
Leven, the Scottish general-in-chief, who treated him as an
honourable prisoner. Negotiations between the Parliament on
41 6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the one hand and the Scottish authorities on the other, as to
what should be done with him, lasted until the following
February. Then, when the King had refused to the Parliament
the concession of that old militia point for twenty years, and
had refused to Scotland the recognition of its Solemn League
and Covenant, Scotland got a handsome sum for its army and
its help, and the King into the bargain. He was taken, by
certain Parliamentary commissioners appointed to receive him,
to one of his own houses, called Holmby House, near Althorpe,
in Northamptonshire.
While the Civil War was still in progress, John Pym died,
and was buried with great honour in Westminster Abbey — not
with greater honour than he deserved, for the liberties of
Englishmen owe a mighty debt to Pym and Hampden. The
war was but newly over when the Earl of Essex died, of an
illness brought on by his having overheated himself in a stag
hunt in Windsor Forest. He, too, was buried in Westminster
Abbey, with great state. I wish it were not necessary to add
that Archbishop Laud died upon the scaffold when the war was
not yet done. His trial lasted in all nearly a year, and, it being
doubtful even then whether the charges brought against him
amounted to treason, the odious old contrivance of the worst
kings was resorted to, and a bill of attainder was brought in
against him. He was a violently prejudiced and mischievous
person ; had had strong ear-cropping and nose-splitting pro-
pensities, as you know ; and had done a world of harm. But
he died peaceably, and like a brave old man.
Fourth Part
When the Parliament had got the King into their hands, they
became very anxious to get rid of their army, in which Oliver
Cromwell had begun to acquire great power ; not only because
of his courage and high abilities, but because he professed to be
very sincere in the Scottish sort of Puritan religion that was
then exceedingly popular among the soldiers. They were as
much opposed to the Bishops as to the Pope himself ; and the
very privates, drummers, and trumpeters, had such an incon-
CHARLES THE FIRST 417
venient habit of starting up and preaching long-winded
discourses, that I would not have belonged to that army
on any account.
So, the Parliament, being far from sure but that the army
might begin to preach and fight against them now it had noth-
ing else to do, proposed to disband the greater part of it, to send
another part to serve in Ireland against the rebels, and to keep
only a small force in England. But, the army would not consent
to be broken up, except upon its own conditions ; and when the
Parliament showed an intention of compelling it, it acted for
itself in an unexpected manner. A certain cornet, of the name
of JOICE, arrived at Holmby House one night, attended by
four hundred horsemen, went into the King's room with his hat
in one hand and a pistol in the other, and told the King that he
had come to take him away. The King was willing enough to
go, and only stipulated that he should be publicly required to
do so next morning. Next morning, accordingly, he appeared
on the top of the steps of the house, and asked Cornet Joice
before his men and the guard set there by the Parliament, what
authority he had for taking him away ? To this Cornet Joice
replied, " The authority of the army." " Have you a written
commission?" said the King. Joice, pointing to his four
hundred men on horseback, replied, " That is my commission."
" Well," said the King, smiling, as if he were pleased, " I never
before read such a commission; but it is written in fair and
legible characters. This is a company of as handsome proper
gentlemen as I have seen a long while." He was asked where
he would like to live, and he said at Newmarket. So, to
Newmarket he and Cornet Joice and the four hundred horseman
rode; the King remarking, in the same smiling way, that he
could ride as far at a spell as Cornet Joice, or any man there.
The King quite believed, I think, that the army were his
friends. He said as much to Fairfax when that general, Oliver
Cromwell, and Ireton, went to persuade him to return to the
custody of the Parliament. He preferred to remain as he was,
and resolved to remain as he was. And when the army moved
nearer and nearer London to frighten the Parliament into
yielding to their demands, they took the King with them. It
was a deplorable thing that England should be at the mercy of
2 D
41 8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
a great body of soldiers with arms in their hands ; but the
King certainly favoured them at this important time of his life,
as compared with the more lawful power that tried to control
him. It must be added, however, that they treated him, as yet, •
more respectfully and kindly than the Parliament had done.
They allowed him to be attended by his own servants, to be
splendidly entertained at various houses, and to see his children
— at Cavesham House, near Reading — for two days. Whereas,
the Parliament had been rather hard with him, and had only
allowed him to ride out and play at bowls.
It is much to be believed that if the King could have been
trusted, even at this time, he might have been saved. Even
Oliver Cromwell expressly said that he did believe that no man
could enjoy his possessions in peace, unless the King had his
rights. He was not unfriendly towards the King ; he had been
present when he received his children, and had been much affected
by the pitiable nature of the scene ; he saw the King often ; he
frequently walked and talked with him in the long galleries and
pleasant gardens of the Palace at Hampton Court, whither he
was now removed ; and in all this risked something of his
influence with the army. But, the King was in secret hopes of
help from the Scottish people ; and the moment he was en-
couraged to join them he began to be cool to his new friends,
the army, and to tell the officers that they could not possibly do
without him. At the very time, too, when he was promising to
make Cromwell and Ireton noblemen, if they would help him
up to his old height, he was writing to the Queen that he meant
to hang them. They both afterwards declared that they had
been privately informed that such a letter would be found, on a
certain evening, sewed up in a saddle which would be taken to the
Blue Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover ; and that they went
there, disguised as common soldiers, and sat drinking in the inn-
yard until a njan came with the saddle, which they ripped up
with their knives, and therein found the letter. I see little
reason to doubt the story. It is certain that Oliver Cromwell
told one of the King's most faithful followers that the King
could not be trusted, and that he would not be answerable if
anything amiss were to happen to him. Still, even after that,
he kept a promise he had made to the King, by letting him
FINDING CHARLES FIRSTS CORRESPONDENCE
CHARLES THE FIRST 421
know that there was a plot with a certain portion of the army
to seize him. I believe that, in fact, he sincerely wanted the
King to escape abroad, and so to be got rid of without more
trouble or danger. That Oliver himself had work enough with
the army is pretty plain ; for some of the troops were so
mutinous against him, and against those who acted with him at
this time, that he found it necessary to have one man shot at
the head of his regiment to overawe the rest.
The King, when he received Oliver's warning, made his
escape from Hampton Court; after some indecision and un-
certainty, he went to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight.
At first, he was pretty free there ; but, even there, he carried on
a pretended treaty with the Parliament, while he was really
treating with commissioners from Scotland to send an army
into England to take his part. When he broke off this treaty
with the Parliament (having settled with Scotland) and was
treated as a prisoner, his treatment was not changed too soon,
for he had plotted to escape that very night to a ship sent by
the Queen, which was lying off the island.
He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from
Scotland. The agreement he had made with the Scottish
Commissioners was not favourable enough to the religion of
that country to please the Scottish clergy ; and they preached
against it. The consequence was, that the army raised in
Scotland and sent over, was too small to do much ; and that,
although it was helped by a rising of the Royalists in England
and by good soldiers from Ireland, it could make no head
against the Parliamentary army under such men as Cromwell
and Fairfax. The King's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, came
over from Holland with nineteen ships (a part of the English
fleet having gone over to him) to help his father ; but nothing
came of his voyage, and he was fain to return. The most
remarkable event of this second civil war was the cruel execution
by the Parliamentary General, of Sir Charles Lucas and
Sir George Lisle, two grand Royalist generals, who had
bravely defended Colchester under every disadvantage of
famine and distress for nearly three months. When Sir Charles
Lucas was shot. Sir George Lisle kissed his body, and said to
the soldiers who were to shoot him, " Come nearer, and make
422 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
sure of me." " I warrant you, Sir George," said one of the
soldiers, " we shall hit you." " Ay ? " he returned with a smile,
" but I have been nearer to you, my friends, many a time, and
you have missed me."
The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the army —
who demanded to have seven members whom they disliked
given up to them — had voted that they would have nothing
more to do with the King. On the conclusion, however, of this
second civil war (which did not last more than six months), they
appointed commissioners to treat with him. The King, then so
far released again as to be allowed to live in a private house at
Newport in the Isle of Wight, managed his own part of the
negotiation with a sense that was admired by all who saw him,
and gave up, in the end, all that was asked of him — even yield-
ing (which he had steadily refused, so far) to the temporary
abolition of the bishops, and the transfer of their church land to
the Crown. Still, with his old fatal vice upon him, when his
best friends joined the commissioners in beseeching him to
yield all those points as the only means of saving himself from
the army, he was plotting to escape from the island; he was
holding correspondence with his friends and the Catholics in
Ireland, though declaring that he was not; and he was writing,
with his own hand, that in what he yielded he meant nothing
but to get time to escape.
Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to defy
the Parliament, marched up to London. The Parliament, not
afraid of them now, and boldly led by HoUis, voted that the
King's concessions were sufficient grounds for settling the peace
of the ^kingdom. Upon that, COLONEL RiCH and COLONEL
Pride went down to the House of Commons with a regiment
of horse soldiers and a regiment of foot ; and Colonel Pride,
standing in the lobby with a list of the members who were
obnoxious to the army in his hand, had them pointed out to
him as they came through, and took them all into custody.
This proceeding was afterwards called by the people, for a joke,
Pride's Purge. Cromwell was in the North, at the head of his
men, at the time, but when he came home, approved of what
had been done.
What with imprisoning some members and causing others to
CHARLES THE FIRST 423
stay away, the army had now reduced the House of Commons
to some fifty or so. These soon voted that it was treason in a
king to make war against his parliament and his people, and
sent an ordinance up to the House of Lords for the King's
being tried as a traitor. The House of Lords, then sixteen
in number, to a man rejected it. Thereupon, the Commons
made an ordinance of their own, that they were the supreme
government of the country, and would bring the King to trial.
The King had been taken for security to a place called
Hurst Castle : a lonely house on a rock in the sea, connected
with the coast of Hampshire by a rough road two miles long at
low water. Thence, he was ordered to be removed to Windsor ;
thence, after being but rudely used there, and having none but
soldiers to wait upon him at table, he was brought up to St
James's Palace in London, and told that his trial was appointed
for next day.
On Saturday, the twentieth of January, one thousand six
hundred and forty-nine, this memorable trial began. The
House of Commons had settled that one hundred and thirty-
five persons should form the Court, and these were taken from
the House itself, from among the officers of the army, and from
among the lawyers and citizens. JOHN Bradshaw, serjeant-at-
law, was appointed president. The place was Westminster
Hall. At the upper end, in a red velvet chair, sat the president,
with his hat (lined with plates of iron for his protection) on his
head. The rest of the Court sat on side benches, also wearing
their hats. The King's seat was covered with velvet, like that
of the president, and was opposite to it. He was brought from
St James's to Whitehall, and from Whitehall he came by water
to his trial.
When he came in, he looked round very steadily on the
Court, and on the great number of spectators, and then sat
down : presently he got up and looked round again. On the
indictment "against Charles Stuart, for high treason," being
read, he smiled several times, and he denied the authority of
the Court, saying that there could be no parliament without a
House of Lords, and that he saw no House of Lords there.
Also, that the King ought to be there, and that he saw no King
in the King's right place. Bradshaw replied, that the Court
424 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
was satisfied with its authority, and that its authority was God's
authority and the kingdom's. He then adjourned the Court to
the following Monday. On that day, the trial was resumed, and
went on all the week. When the Saturday came, as the King
passed forward to his place in the Hall, some soldiers and
others cried for "justice!" and execution on him. That day,
too, Bradshaw, like an angry Sultan, wore a red robe, instead of
the black robe he had worn before. The King was sentenced
to death that day. As he went out, one solitary soldier said,
" God bless you. Sir ! " For this, his officer struck him. The
King said he thought the punishment exceeded the offence.
The silver head of his walking-stick had fallen off while he
leaned upon it, at one time of the trial. The accident seemed
to disturb him, as if he thought it ominous of the falling of his
own head ; and he admitted as much, now it was all over.
Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the House of
Commons, saying that as the time of his execution might be
nigh, he wished he might be allowed to see his darling children.
It was granted. On the Monday he was taken back to St
James's ; and his two children then in England, the PRINCESS
Elizabeth thirteen years old, and the Duke of Gloucester
nine years old, were brought to take leave of him, from Sion
House, near Brentford. It was a sad and touching scene, when
he kissed and fondled those poor children, and made a little
present of two diamond seals to the Princess, and gave them
tender messages to their mother (who little deserved them, for
she had a lover of her own whom she married soon afterwards),
and told them that he died " for the laws and liberties of the
land." I am bound to say that I don't think he did, but I dare
say he believed so.
There were ambassadors from Holland that day, to intercede
for the unhappy King, whom you and I both wish the Parliament
had spared; but they got no answer. The Scottish Commis-
sioners interceded too ; so did the Prince of Wales, by a letter
in which he offered, as the next heir to the throne, to accept any
conditions from the Parliament ; so did the Queen, by letter
likewise. Notwithstanding all, the warrant for the execution
was this day signed. There is a story that as Oliver Cromwell
went to the table with the pen in his hand to put his signature
CHARLES THE FIRST 425
to it, he drew his pen across the face of one of the commissioners,
who was standing near, and marked it with ink. Thpt commis-
sioner had not signed his own name yet, and the story adds that
when he came to do it he marked Cromwell's face with ink in
the same way.
The King slept well, untroubled by the knowledge that it
was his last night on earth, and rose on the thirtieth of January,
two hours before day, and dressed himself carefully. He put on
two shirts lest he should tremble with the cold, and had his hair
very carefully combed. The warrant had been directed to three
officers of the army, COLONEL Hacker, COLONEL HUNKS,
and Colonel Phayer. At ten o'clock, the first of these came
to the door and said it was time to go to Whitehall. The King,
who ,had always been a quick walker, walked at his usual speed
through the Park, and called out to the guard, with his accus-
tomed voice of command, " March on apace ! " When he came
to Whitehall, he was taken to his own bedroom, where a break-
fast was set forth. As he had taken the Sacrament, he would
eat nothing more ; but, at about the time when the church bells
struck twelve at noon (for he had to wait, through the scaffold
not being ready), he took the advice of the good Bishop Juxon
who was with him, and ate a little bread and drank a glass of
claret. Soon after he had taken this refreshment. Colonel
Hacker came to the chamber with the warrant in his hand, and
called for Charles Stuart.
And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace,
which he had often seen light and gay and merry and crowded,
in very different times, the fallen King passed along, until he
came to the centre window of the Banqueting House, through
which he emerged upon the scaffold, which was hung with
black. He looked at the two executioners, who were dressed in
black and masked ; he looked at the troops of soldiers on horse-
back and on foot, and all looked up at him in silence ; he looked
at the vast array of spectators, filling up the view beyond, and
turning all their faces upon him ; he looked at his old Palace of
St James's ; and he looked at the block. He seemed a little
troubled to find that it was so low, and asked, " if there were no
place higher ? " Then, to those upon the scaffold, he said " that
it was the Parliament who had begun the war, and not he ; but
426 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
he hoped they might be guiltless too, as ill instruments had
gone between them. In one respect," he said, "he suffered
justly ; and that was because he had permitted an unjust sen-
tence to be executed on another." In this he referred to the
Earl of Strafford.
He was not at all afraid to die ; but he was anxious to die
easily. When someone touched the axe while he was speaking,
he broke off and called out, " Take heed of the axe I take heed
of the axe ! " He also said to Colonel Hacker, " Take care
that they do not put me to pain." He' told the executioner,
" I shall say but very short prayers, [ and then thrust out my
hands " — as the sign to strike.
He put his hair up, under a white satin cap which the bishop
had carried, and said, " I have a good cause and a gracious God
on my side." The bishop told him that he had but one stage
more to travel in this weary world, and that, though it was a
turbulent and troublesome stage, it was a short one, and would
carry him a great way — all the way from earth to Heaven.
The King's last word, as he gave his cloak and the George — the
decoration from his breast — to the bishop, was, " Remember ! "
He then kneeled down, laid his head on the block, spread out
his hands, and was instantly killed. One universal groan broke
from the crowd ; and the soldiers, who had sat on their horses
and stood in their ranks immovable as statues, were of a sudden
all in motion, clearing the streets.
Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the same
time of his career as Strafford had fallen in his, perished Charles
the First. With all my sorrow for him, I cannot agree with
him that he died " the martyr of the people " ; for the people
had been martyrs to him, and to his ideas of a King's rights, long
before. Indeed, I am afraid that he was but a bad judge of
martyrs ; for he had called that infamous Duke of Buckingham
" the, Martyr of his Sovereign."
OLIVER CROMWELL
427
CHAPTER XXXIV
ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL
Before sunset on the memorable day on which King Charles
the First was executed, the House of Commons passed an act
declaring it treason in anyone to proclaim the Prince of Wales
— or anybody else — King of England. Soon afterwards, it de-
clared that the House of Lords was useless and dangerous, and
ought to be abolished ; and directed that the late King's statue
should be taken down from the Royal Exchange in the City
and other public places. Having laid hold of some famous
Royalists who had escaped from prison, and having beheaded
the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Holland, and Lord Capel,
in Palace Yard (all of whom died very courageously), they then
appointed a Council of State to govern the country. It con-
sisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers. Bradshaw
was made president. The House of Commons also re-admitted
428 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
members who had opposed the King's death, and made up its
numbers to about a hundred and fifty.
But, it still had an army of more than forty thousand men to
deal with, and a very hard task it was to manage them. Before
the King's execution, the army had appointed some of its officers
to remonstrate between them and the Parliament ; and now the
common soldiers began to take that office upon themselves.
The regiments under orders for Ireland mutinied ; one troop
of horse in the City of London seized their own flag, and refused
to obey orders. For this, the ringleader was shot : which did
not mend the matter, for, both his comrades and the people
made a public funeral for him, and accompanied the body to the
grave with sound of trumpets and with a gloomy procession of
persons carrying bundles of rosemary steeped in blood. Oliver
was the only man to deal with such difficulties as these, and he
soon cut them short by bursting at midnight into the town of
Burford, near Salisbury, where the mutineers were sheltered,
taking four hundred of them prisoners, and shooting a number
of them by sentence of court-martial. The soldiers soon found,
as all men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled with.
And there was an end of the mutiny.
The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet ; so, on
hearing of the King's execution, it proclaimed the Prince of
Wales King Charles the Second, on condition of his respecting
the Solemn League and Covenant. Charles was abroad at that
time, and so was Montrose, from whose help he had hopes
enough to keep him holding on and off with commissioners
from Scotland, just as his father might have done. These hopes
were soon at an end ; for, Montrose, having raised a few hundred
exiles in Germany, and landed with them in Scotland, found
that the people there, instead of joining him, deserted the country
at his approach. He was soon taken prisoner and carried to
Edinburgh. There he was received with every possible insult,
and carried to prison in a cart, his officers going two and two
before him. He was sentenced by the Parliament to be hanged
on a gallows thirty feet high, to have his head set on a spike in
Edinburgh, and his limbs distributed in other places, according
to the old barbarous manner. He said he had always acted
under the Royal orders, and only wished he had limbs enough
OLIVER CROMWELL 429
to be distributed through Christendom, that it might be the
more widely known how loyal he had been. He went to the
scaffold in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold end at
thirty-eight years of age. The breath was scarcely out of his
body when Charles abandoned his memory, and denied that he
had ever given him orders to rise in his behalf. O the family
failing was strong in that Charles then !
Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to command
the army in Ireland, where he took a terrible vengeance for the
sanguinary rebellion, and made tremendous havoc, particularly
in the siege of Drogheda, where no quarter was given, and where
he found at least a thousand of the inhabitants shut up together
in the great church : every one of whom was killed by his
soldiers, usually known as Oliver's Ironsides. There were
numbers of friars and priests among them, and Oliver gruffly
wrote home in his despatch that these were " knocked on the
head " like the rest.
But, Charles having got over to Scotland where the men of
the Solemn League and Covenant led him a prodigiously dull
life and made him very weary with long sermons and grim
Sundays, the Parliament called the redoubtable Oliver home
to knock the Scottish men on the head for setting up that
Prince. Oliver left his son-in-law, Ireton, as general in Ireland
in his stead (he died there afterwards), and he imitated the
example of his father-in-law with such good will that he
brought the country to subjection, and laid it at the feet of
the Parliament. In the end, they passed an act for the settle-
ment of Ireland, generally pardoning all the common people,
but exempting from this grace such of the wealthier sort as had
been concerned in the rebellion, or in any killing of Protestants,
or who refused to lay down their arms. Great numbers of Irish
were got out of the country to serve under Catholic powers
abroad, and a quantity of land was declared to have been for-
feited by past offences, and was given to people who had lent
money to the Parliament early in the war. These were sweep-
ing measures; but, if Oliver Cromwell had had his own way
fully, and had stayed in Ireland, he would have done more yet.
However, as I have said, the Parliament wanted Oliver for
Scotland ; so, home Oliver came, and was made Commander of
430 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
all the Forces of the Commonwealth of England, and in three
days away he went with sixteen thousand soldiers to fight the
Scottish men. Now, the Scottish men, being then — as you will
generally find them now — mighty cautious, reflected that the
troops they had, were not used to war like the Ironsides, and
would be beaten in an open fight. Therefore they said, " If we
lie quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here, and if all the
farmers come into the town and desert the country, the Iron-
sides will be driven out by iron hunger and be forced to go
away." This was, no doubt, the wisest plan ; but as the
Scottish clergy would interfere with what they knew nothing
about, and would perpetually preach long sermons exhorting
the soldiers to come out and fight, the soldiers got it into their
heads that they absolutely must come out and fight. Accord-
ingly, in an evil hour for themselves, they came out of their safe
position. Oliver fell upon them instantly, and killed three
thousand, and took ten thousand prisoners.
To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and preserve their
favour, Charles had signed a declaration they laid before him,
reproaching the memory of his father and mother, and repre-
senting himself as a most religious Prince, to whom the Solemn
League and Covenant was as dear as life. He meant no sort
of truth in this, and soon afterwards galloped away on horse-
back to join some tiresome Highland friends, who were always
flourishing dirks and broadswords. He was overtaken and
induced to return ; but this attempt, which was called " The
Start," did him just so much service, that they did not preach
quite such long sermons at him afterwards as they had done
before.
On the first of January, one thousand six hundred and
fifty-one, the Scottish people crowned him at Scone. He
immediately took the chief command of an army of twenty
thousand men, and marched to Stirling. His hopes were
heightened, I dare say, by the redoubtable Oliver being ill of
an ague ; but Oliver scrambled out of bed in no time, and went
to work with such energy that he got behind the Royalist army
and cut it off from all communication with Scotland. There
was nothing for it then, but to go on to England ; so it went on
as far as Worcester, where the mayor and some of the gentry
OLIVER CROMWELL 431
proclaimed King Charles the Second straightway. His pro-
clamation, however, was of little use to him, for very few
Royalists appeared ; and, on the very same day, two people
were publicly beheaded on Tower Hill for espousing his cause.
Up came Oliver to Worcester too, at double quick speed, and
he and his Ironsides so laid about them in the great battle
which was fought there, that they completely beat the Scottish
rtlen, and destroyed the Royalist army ; though the Scottish
men fought so gallantly that it took five hours to do.
The escape of Charles after this battle of Worcester did
him good service long afterwards, for it induced many of the
generous English people to take a romantic interest in him, and
to think much better of him than he ever deserved. He fled in
the night, with not more than sixty followers, to the house of a
Catholic lady in Staffordshire. There, for his greater safety,
the whole sixty left him. He cropped his hair, stained his face
and hands brown as if they were sunburnt, put on the clothes
of a labouring countryman, and went out in the morning with
his axe in his hand, accompanied by four wood-cutters who
were brothers, and another man who was their brother-in-law.
These good fellows made a bed for him under a tree, as the
weather was very bad ; and the wife of one of them brought
him food to eat ; and the old mother of the four brothers came
and fell down on her knees before him in the wood, and thanked
God that her sons were engaged in saving his life. At night,
he came out of the forest and went on to another house which
was near the river Severn, with the intention of passing into
Wales; but the place swarmed with soldiers, and the bridges
were guarded, and all the boats were made fast. So, after lying
in a hayloft covered over with hay, for some time, he came out
of his place, attended by COLONEL CARELESS, a Catholic
gentleman who had met him there, and with whom he lay hid,
all next day, up in the shady branches of a fine old oak. It
was lucky for the King that it was September-time, and that
the leaves had not begun to fall, since he and the Colonel,
perched up in this tree, could catch glimpses of the soldiers
riding about below, and could hear the crash in the wood as
they went about beating the boughs.
After this, he walked and walked until his feet were all
432 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
blistered ; and, having been concealed all one day in a house
which was searched by the troopers while he was there, went
with Lord Wilmot, another of his good friends, to a place
called Bentley, where one MisS LANE, a Protestant lady, had
obtained a pass to be allowed to ride through the guards to see
a relation of hers near Bristol. Disguised as a servant, he rode
in the saddle before this young lady to the house of SIR JOHN
Winter, while Lord Wilmot rode there boldly, like a plain
country gentleman, with dogs at his heels. It happened that
Sir John Winter's butler had been Servant in Richmond Palace,
and knew Charles the moment he set eyes upon him ; but, the
butler was faithful and kept the secret. As no ship could be
found to carry him abroad, it was planned that he should go —
still travelling with Miss Lane as her servant — to another house,
at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire ; and then Miss Lane
and her cousin, Mr Lascelles, who had gone on horseback
beside her all the way, went home. I hope Miss Lane was
going to marry that cousin, for I am sure she must have been a
brave kind girl. If I had been that cousin, I should certainly
have loved Miss Lane.
When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was safe at
Trent, a ship was hired at Lyme, the master of which engaged
to take two gentlemen to France. In the evening of the same
day, the King — now riding as servant before another young
lady — set off for a public-house at a place called Charmouth,
where the captain of the vessel was to take him on board. But,
the captain's wife, being afraid of her husband getting into
trouble, locked him up and would not let him sail. Then they
went away to Bridport ; and, coming to the inn there, found
the stable-yard full of soldiers who were on the look-out for
Charles, and who talked about him while they drank. He had
such presence of mind, that he led the horses of his party
through the yard as any other servant might have done, and
said, " Come out of the way, you soldiers ; let us have room to
pass here ! " As he went along, he met a half-tipsy ostler, who
rubbed his eyes and said to him, " Why, I was formerly servant
to Mr Potter at Exeter, and surely I have sometimes seen you
there, young man ? " He certainly had, for Charles had lodged
there. His ready answer was, " Ah, I did live with him once ;
PRINCE CHARLES HIDING IN THE OAK
2 E
OLIVER CROMWELL 435
but I have no time to talk now. We'll have a pot of beer
together when I come back."
From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and lay
there concealed several days. Then he escaped to Heale, near
Salisbury ; where, in the house of a widow lady, he was hidden
five days, until the master of a collier lying off Shoreham in
Sussex, undertook to convey a " gentleman " to France. On
the night of the fifteenth of October, accompanied by two
colonels and a merchant, the King rode to Brighton, then a
little fishing village, to give the captain of the ship a supper
before going on board ; but, so many people knew him, that this
captain knew him too, and not only he, but the landlord and
landlady also. Before he went away, the landlord came behind
his chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to live to be a lord
and to see his wife a lady ; at which Charles laughed. They
had had a good supper by this time, and plenty of smoking and
drinking, at which the King was a first rate hand ; so, the captain
assured him that he would stand by him, and he did. It was
agreed that the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that
Charles should address the sailors and say he was a gentleman
in debt who was running away from his creditors, and that he
hoped they would join him in persuading the captain to put
him ashore in France. As the King acted his part very well
indeed, and gave the sailors twenty shillings to drink, they
begged the captain to do what such a worthy gentleman asked.
He pretended to yield to their entreaties, and the King got safe
to Normandy.
Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by
plenty of forts and soldiers put there by Oliver, the Parliament
would have gone on quietly enough, as far as fighting with any
foreign enemy went, but for getting into trouble with the Dutch,
who in the spring of the year one thousand six hundred and
fifty-one sent a fleet into the Downs under their Admiral Van
Tromp, to call upon the bold English Admiral Blake (who was
there with half as many ships as the Dutch) to strike his flag.
Blake fired a raging broadside instead, and beat off" Van Tromp ;
who, in the autumn, came back again with seventy ships, and
challenged the bold Blake— who still was only half as strong—
to fight him. Blake fought him all day ; but, finding that the
436 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Dutch were too many for him, got quietly off at night. What
does Van Tromp upon this, but go cruising and boasting about
the Channel, between the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight,
with a great Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign that
he could and would sweep the English off the sea ! Within
three months, Blake lowered his tone though, and his broom
too ; for he and two other bold commanders, DEAN and MoNK,
fought him three whole days, took twenty-three of his ships,
shivered his broom to pieces, and settled his business.
Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army began to
complain to the Parliament that they were not governing the
nation properly, and to hint that they thought they could do
it better themselves. Oliver, who had now made up his mind
to be the head of the state, or nothing at all, supported them in
this, and called a meeting of officers and his own Parliamentary
friends, at his lodgings in Whitehall, to consider the best way
of getting rid of the Parliament. It had now lasted just as
many years as the King's unbridled power had lasted, before
It came into existence. The end of the deliberation was, that
Oliver went down to the house in his usual plain black dress,
with his usual grey worsted stockings, but with an unusual party
of soldiers behind him. These last he left in the lobby, and
then went in and sat down. Presently he got up, made the
Parliament a speech, told them that the Lord had done with
them, stamped his foot and said, " You are no Parliament. Bring
them in I Bring them in ! " At this signal the door flew open,
and the soldiers appeared. " This is not honest," said Sir Harry
Vane, one of the members. " Sir Harry Vane ! " cried Crom-
well ; " O, Sir Harry Vane 1 The Lord deliver me from Sir
Harry Vane ! " Then he pointed out members one by one, and
said this man was a drunkard, and that man a dissipated fellow,
and that man a liar, and so on. Then he caused the Speaker
to be walked out of his chair, told the guard to clear the House,
called the mace upon the table — which is a sign that the House
is sitting — " a fool's bauble," and said, " here, carry it away ! "
Being obeyed in all these orders, he quietly locked the door,
put the key in his pocket, walked back to Whitehall again,
and told his friends, who were still assembled there, what he
had done.
OLIVER CROMWELL 437
They formed a new Council of State after this extraordinary
proceeding, and got a new Parliament together in their own way ;
which Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon, and which he
said was the beginning of a perfect heaven upon earth. In this
Parliament there sat a well-known leather-seller, who had taken
the singular name of Praise God Barebones, and from whom it
was Called, for a joke, Barebones's Parliament, though its general
name was the Little Parliament. As it soon appeared that it
was not going to put Oliver in the first place, it turned out to
be not at all like the beginning of heaven upon earth, and Oliver
said it really was not to be borne with. So he cleared off that
Parliament in much the same way as he had disposed of the
other ; and then the council of officers decided that he must be
made the supreme authority of the kingdom, under the title of
the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.
So, on the sixteenth of December, one thousand six hundred
and fifty-three, a great procession was formed at Oliver's door,
and he came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair of boots,
and got into his coach and went down to Westminster, attended
by the judges, and the lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all
the other great and wonderful personages of the country. There,
in the Court of Chancery, he publicly accepted the office of
Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, and the City sword was
handed to him, and the seal was handed to him, and all the
other things were handed to him which are usually handed to
Kings and Queens on state occasions. When Oliver had
handed them all back, he was quite made and completely
finished off as Lord Protector ; and several of the Ironsides
preached about it at great length, all the evening.
Second Part
Oliver Cromwell — whom the people long called Old Noll
— in accepting the office of Protector, had bound himself by a
certain paper which was handed to him, called " the Instrument,"
to summon a Parliament, consisting of between four and five
hundred members, in the election of which neither the Royalists
nor the Catholics were to have any share. He had also pledged
438 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
himself that this Parliament should not be dissolved without its
own consent until it had sat five months.
When this Parliament met, Oliver made a speech to them
of three hours long, very wisely advising them what to do for
the credit and happiness of the country. To keep down the
more violent members, he required them to sign a recognition
of what they were forbidden by " the Instrument " to do ; which
was, chiefly, to take the power from one single person at the
head of the state or to command the army. Then he dismissed
them to go to work. With his usual vigour and resolution he
went to work himself with some frantic preachers — who were
rather over-doing their sermons in calling him a villain and a
tyrant — by shutting up their chapels, and sending a few of them
oflf to prison.
There was not at that time, in England or anywhere else, a
man so able to govern the country as Oliver Cromwell. Although
he ruled with a strong hand, and levied a very heavy tax on the
Royalists (but not until they had plotted against his life), he
ruled wisely, and as the times required. He caused England to
be so respected abroad, that I wish some lords and gentlemen
who have governed it under kings and queens in later days
would have taken a leaf out of Oliver Cromwell's book. He
sent bold Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean Sea, to make the
Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand pounds for injuries he
had done to British subjects, and spoliation he had committed
on English merchants. He further despatched him and his
fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, to have every English ship
and every English man delivered up to him that had been taken
by pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously done ; and it
began to be thoroughly well known, all over the" world, that
England was governed by a man in earnest, who would not
allow the English name to be insulted or slighted anywhere.
These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a fleet to
sea against the Dutch ; and the two powers, each with one
hundred ships upon its side, met in the English Channel off the
North Foreland, where the fight lasted all day long. Dean was
killed in this fight ; but Monk, who commanded in the same
ship with him, threw his cloak over his body, that the sailors
might not know of his death, and be disheartened. Nor were
OLIVER CROMWELL
439
CROMWELL'S IRONSIDES
they. The English broadsides so exceedingly astonished the
Dutch that they sheered off at last, though the redoubtable Van
Tromp fired upon them with his own guns for deserting their
flag. Soon afterwards, the two fleets engaged again, off" the
coast of Holland. There, the valiant Van Tromp was shot
through the heart, and the Dutch gave in and peace was made.
Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the domineer-
ing and bigoted conduct of Spain, which country not only
claimed a right to all the gold and silver that could be found
in South America, and treated the ships of all other countries
who visited those regions, as pirates, but put English subjects
into the horrible Spanish prisons of the Inquisition. So, Oliver
told the Spanish ambassador that English ships must be free to
go wherever they would, and that English merchants must not
be thrown into those same dungeons, no, not for the pleasure
of all the priests in Spain. To this, the Spanish ambassador
replied that the gold and silver country, and the Holy Inquisi-
tion, were his King's two eyes, neither of which he could submit
440 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to have put out. Very well, said Oliver, then he was afraid he
(Oliver) must damage those two eyes directly.
So, another fleet was despatched under two commanders,
Penn and Venables, for Hispaniola ; where, however, the
Spaniards got the better of the fight. Consequently, the fleet
came home again, after taking Jamaica on the way. Oliver,
indignant with the two commanders who had not done what
bold Admiral Blake would have done, clapped them both into
prison, declared war against Spain, and made a treaty with
France, in virtue of which it was to shelter the King and his
brother the Duke of York no longer. Then, he sent a fleet
abroad under bold Admiral Blake, which brought the King of
Portugal to his senses — just to keep its hand in — and then
engaged a Spanish fleet, sunk four great ships, and took two
more, laden with silver to the value of two millions of pounds :
which dazzling prize was brought from Portsmouth to London
in waggons, with the populace of all the towns and villages
through which the waggons passed, shouting with all their
might. After this victory, bold Admiral Blake sailed away to
the port of Santa Cruz to cut off" the Spanish treasure-ships
coming from Mexico. There, he found them, ten in number,
with seven others to take care of them, and a big castle, and seven
batteries, all roaring and blazing away at him with great guns.
Blake cared no more for great guns than for pop-guns — no more
for their hot iron balls than for snow-balls. He dashed into the
harbour, captured and burnt every one of the ships, and came
sailing out again triumphantly, with the victorious English flag
flying at his mast-head. This was the last triumph of this great
commander, who had sailed and fought until he was quite worn
out. He died, as his successful ship was coming into Plymouth
Harbour amidst the joyful acclamations of the people, and
was buried in state in Westminster Abbey. Not to lie there
long.
Over and above all this, Oliver found that the Vaudois, or
Protestant people of the valleys of Lucerne, were insolently
treated by the Catholic powers, and were even put to death for
their religion, in an audacious and bloody manner. Instantly,
he informed those powers that this was a thing which Protestant
England would not allow ; and he speedily carried his point,
OLIVER CROMWELL 441
through the might of his great name, and established their right
to worship God in peace after their own harmless manner.
Lastly, his English army won such admiration in fighting
with the French against the Spaniards, that, after they had
assaulted the town of Dunkirk together, the French King in
person gave it up to the English, that it might be a token to
them of their might and valour.
There were plots enough against Oliver among the frantic
religionists (who called themselves Fifth Monarchy Men), and
among the disappointed Republicans. He had a difficult game
to play, for the Royalists were always ready to side with either
party against him. The " King over the water," too, as Charles
was called, had no scruples about plotting with anyone against
his life ; although there is reason to suppose that he would
willingly have married one of his daughters, if Oliver would
have had such a son-in-law. There was a certain COLONEL
Saxby of the army, once a great supporter of Oliver's but now
turned against him, who was a grievous trouble to him through
all this part of his career; and who came and went between
the discontented in England and Spain, and Charles who put
himself in alliance with Spain on being thrown off by France.
This man died in prison at last ; but not until there had been
very serious plots between the Royalists and Republicans, and
an actual rising of them in England, when they burst into the
city of Salisbury on a Sunday night, seized the judges who
were going to hold the assizes there next day, and would have
hanged them but for the merciful objections of the more tem-
perate of their number. Oliver was so vigorous and shrewd
that he soon put this revolt down, as he did most other con-
spiracies ; and it was well for one of its chief managers — that
same Lord Wilmot who had assisted in Charles's flight, and
was now Earl OF ROCHESTER — that he made his escape.
Oliver seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere, and secured
such sources of information as his enemies little dreamed of.
There was a chosen body of six persons, called the Sealed
Knot, who were in the closest and most secret confidence of
Charles. One of the foremost of these very men, a SIR RICHARD
Willis, reported to Oliver everything that passed among them,
and had two hundred a year for it.
442 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Puritan
Miles Syndarcomb, also
of the old army, was another
conspirator against the Pro-
tector. He and a man named
Cecil, bribed one of his Life
Guards to let them have good
notice when he was going out
— intending to shoot him from
a window. But, owing either
to his caution or his good
fortune, they could never get
an aim at him. Disappointed
in this design, they got into
the chapel in Whitehall, with
a basketful of combustibles,
which were to explode by
means of a slow match in
six hours ; then, in the noise
and confusion of the fire, they
hoped to kill Oliver. But,
the Life Guardsman himself
disclosed this plot ; and they
were seized, and Miles died
(or killed himself in prison)
a little while before he was
ordered for execution. A few
such plotters Oliver caused to
be beheaded, a few more to
be hanged, and many more,
including those who rose in
arms against him, to be sent
as slaves to the West Indies.
If he were rigid, he was im-
partial too, in asserting the
laws of England. When a
Portuguese nobleman, the
brother of the Portuguese am-
bassador, killed a London
citizen in mistake for another
OLIVER CROMWELL
443
man with whom he had had a quarrel, Oliver caused him to be
tried before a jury of Englishmen and foreigners, and had him
executed in spite of the entreaties of all the ambassadors in
London.
One of Oliver's own friends, the DuKE OF Oldenburgh,
in sending him a present of six fine coach-horses, was very near
doing more to please the Royalists than all the plotters put
together. One day, Oliver went with his coach, drawn by these
six horses, into Hyde Park, to dine with his secretary and some
of his other gentlemen under the trees there. After dinner,
being merry, he took it into his head to put his friends inside
and to drive them home : a postillion riding one of the foremost
horses, as the custom was. On account of Oliver's being too
free with the whip, the six fine horses went off at a gallop, the
postillion got thrown, and Oliver fell upon the coach-pole and
narrowly escaped being shot by his own pistol, which got
entangled with his clothes in the harness, and went off. He
was dragged some distance by the foot, until his foot came out of
the shoe, and then he came safely to the ground under the broad
body of the coach, and was very little the worse. The gentle-
men inside were only bruised, and the discontented people of
all parties were much disappointed.
The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver Crom-
well is a history of his Parliaments. His first one not pleasing
him at all, he waited until the five months went out, and then
dissolved it. The next was better suited to his views ; and from
that he desired to get — if he could with safety to himself — the
title of King. He had had this in his mind some time : whether
because he thought that the English people, being more used
to the title, were more likely to obey it ; or whether because he
really wished to be a king himself, and to leave the succession
to that title in his family, is far from clear. He was already as
high, in England and in all the world, as he would ever be, and
I doubt if he cared for the mere name. However, a paper,
called the " Humble Petition and Advice," was presented to
him by the House of Commons, praying him to take a high
title and to appoint his successor. That he would have taken
the title of King there is no doubt, but for the strong opposi-
tion of the army. This induced him to forbear, and to assent
444 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
only to the other points of the petition. Upon which occasion
there was another grand show in Westminster Hall, when the
Speaker of the House of Commons formally invested him with
a purple robe lined with ermine, and presented him with a
splendidly bound Bible, and put a golden sceptre in his hand.
The next time the Parliament met, he called a House of Lords
of sixty members, as the petition gave him power to do ; but
as that Parliament did not please him either, and would not
proceed to the business of the country, he jumped into a coach
one morning, took six Guards with him, and sent them to the
right-about. I wish this had been a warning to Parliaments to
avoid long speeches, and do more work.
It was the month of August, one thousand six hundred and
fifty-eight, when Oliver Cromwell's favourite daughter, ELIZA-
BETH Claypole (who had lately lost her youngest son), lay
very ill, and his mind was greatly troubled, because he loved
her dearly. Another of his daughters was married to LORD
Falconberg, another to the grandson of the Earl of
Warwick, and he had made his son RICHARD one of the
Members of the Upper House. He was very kind and loving
to them all, being a good father and a good husband ; but he
loved this daughter the best of the family, and went down
to Hampton Court to see her, and could hardly be induced
to stir from her sick room until she died. Although his religion
had been of a gloomy kind, his disposition had been always
cheerful. He had been fond of music in his home, and had
kept open table once a week for all officers of the army not
below the rank of captain, and had always preserved in his
house a quiet sensible dignity. He encouraged men of genius
and learning, and loved to have them about him. MiLTON was
one of his great friends. He was good-humoured too, with the
nobility, whose dresses and manners were very different from
his ; and to show them what good information he had, he would
sometimes jokingly tell them when they were his guests, where
they had last drunk the health of the " King over the water,"
and would recommend them to be more private (if they could)
another time. But he had lived in busy times, had borne the
weight of heavy State affairs, and had often gone in fear of his
life. He was ill of the gout and ague ; and when the death of
OLIVER CROMWELL 445
his beloved child came upon him in addition, he sank, never to
raise his head again. He told his physicians on the twenty-
fourth of August that the Lord had assured him that he was
not to die in that illness, and that he would certainly get better.
This was only his sick fancy, for on the third of September,
which was the anniversary of the great battle of Worcester, and
the day of the year which he called his fortunate day, he died,
in the sixtieth year of his age. He had been delirious, and had
lain insensible some hours, but he had been overheard to
murmur a very good prayer the day before. The whole
country lamented his death. If you want to know the real
worth of Oliver Cromwell, and his real services to his country,
you can hardly do better than compare England under him
with England under Charles the Second.
He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him, and after
there had been, at Somerset House in the Strand, a lying in
state more splendid than sensible — as all such vanities after
death are, I think — Richard became Lord Protector. He was
an amiable country gentleman, but had none of his father's
great genius, and was quite unfit for such a post in such a storm
of parties. Richard's Protectorate, which only lasted a year
and a half, is a history of quarrels between the officers of the
army and the Parliament, and between the officers among
themselves ; and of a growing discontent among the people,
who had far too many long sermons and far too few amuse-
ments, and wanted a change. At last. General Monk got the
army well into his own hands, and then, in pursuance of a
secret plan he seems to have entertained from the time of
Oliver's death, declared for the King's cause. He did not do
this openly ; but, in his place in the House of Commons, as one
of the members for Devonshire, strongly advocated the proposals
of one Sir John Greenville, who came to the House with a
letter from Charles, dated from Breda, and with whom he had
previously been in secret communication. There had been
plots and counterplots, and a recall of the last members of the
Long Parliament, and an end of the Long Parliament, and
risings of the Royalists that were made too soon ; and most
men being tired out, and there being no one to head the country
now great Oliver was dead, it was readily agreed to welcome
446 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Charles Stuart. Some of the wiser and better members said —
what was most true — that in the letter from Breda, he gave no
real promise to govern well, and that it would be best to make
him pledge himself beforehand as to what he should be bound
to do for the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, however, it
would be all right when he came, and he could not come
too soon.
So, everybody found out all in a moment that the country
must be prosperous and happy, having another Stuart to
condescend to reign over it ; and there was a prodigious firing
off of guns, lighting of bonfires, ringing of bells, and throwing
up of caps. The people drank the King's health by thousands
in the open streets, and everybody rejoiced. Down came the
Arms of the Commonwealth, up went the Royal Arms instead,
and out came the public money. Fifty thousand pounds for the
King, ten thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of York,
five thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of Gloucester.
Prayers for these gracious Stuarts were put up in all the
churches ; commissioners were sent to Holland (which suddenly
found out that Charles was a great man, and that it loved him)
to invite the King home ; Monk and the Kentish grandees went
to Dover, to kneel down before him as he landed. He kissed
and embraced Monk, made him ride in the coach with himself
and his brothers, came on to London amid wonderful shoutings,
and passed through the army at Blackheath on the twenty-ninth
of May (his birthday), in the year one thousand six hundred
and sixty. Greeted by splendid dinners under tents, by flags
and tapestry streaming from all the houses, by delighted crowds
in all the streets, by troops of noblemen and gentlemen in rich
dresses, by City companies, train-bands, drummers, trumpeters,
the great Lord Mayor, and the majestic Aldermen, the King
went on to Whitehall. On entering it, he commemorated his
Restoration with the joke that it really would seem to have
been his own fault that he had not come long ago, since
everybody told him that he had always wished for him with
all his heart.
CHARLES THE SECOND
447
cmass.
, feA'JSV
,->k^
CHAPTER XXXV
ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE
MERRY MONARCH
There never were such profligate times in England as under
Charles the Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with his
swarthy ill-looking face and great nose, you may fancy him in
his Court at Whitehall, surrounded by some of the very worst
vagabonds in the kingdom (though they were lords and ladies),
drinking, gambling, indulging in vicious conversation, and com-
mitting every kind of profligate excess. It has been a fashion
to call Charles the Second " The Merry Monarch." Let me try
to give you a general idea of some of the merry things that were
done, in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat upon his
merry throne, in merry England,
The first merry proceeding was, of course, to declare that
he was one of the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings
448 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
that ever shone, like the blessed sun itself, on this benighted
earth. The next merry and pleasant piece of business was, for
the Parliament, in the humblest manner, to give him one million
two hundred thousand pounds a year, and to settle upon him
for life that old disputed tonnage and poundage which had been
so bravely fought for. Then, General Monk, being made Earl
OF Albemarle, and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded,
the law went to work to see what was to be done to those
persons (they were called Regicides) who had been concerned
in making a martyr of the late King. Ten of these were merrily
executed ; that is to say, six of the judges, one of the council.
Colonel Hacker and another officer who had commanded the
Guards, and Hugh Peters, a preacher who had preached
against the martyr with all his heart. These executions were
so extremely merry, that every horrible circumstance which
Cromwell had abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty.
The hearts of the sufferers were torn out of their living bodies ;
their bowels were burned before their faces ; the executioner
cut jokes to the next victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands
together, that were reeking with the blood of the last; and
the heads of the dead were drawn on sledges with the living
to the place of suffering. Still, even so merry a monarch could
not force one of these dying men to say that he was sorry for
what he had done. Nay, the most memorable thing said among
them was, that if the thing were to do again they would do it.
Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against
Strafford, and was one of the most staunch of the Republicans,
was also tried, found guilty, and ordered for execution. When
he came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill, after conducting his
own defence with great power, his notes of what he had meant
to say to the people were torn away from him, and the drums
and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown his voice ;
for, the people had been so much impressed by what the
Regicides had calmly said with their last breath, that it was
the custom now, to have the drums and trumpets always under
the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no more than this :
" It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a dying
manj" : and bravely died.
These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps
CHARLES THE SECOND 449
even merrier. On the anniversary of the late King's death,
the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were
torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey, dragged to
Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day long, and then
beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a
pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom would
have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for half a
moment ! Think, after you have read this reign, what England
was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his grave, and
what it was under this merry monarch who sold it, like a merry
Judas, over and over again.
Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were
not to be spared either, though they had been most excellent
women. The base clergy of that time gave up their bodies,
which had been buried in the Abbey, and — to the eternal
disgrace of England — they were thrown into a pit, together
with the mouldering bones of Pym and of the brave and bold
old Admiral Blake.
The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to
get the nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly put down in
this reign, and to have but one. prayer-book and one service for
all kinds of people, no matter what their private opinions were.
This was pretty well, I think, for a Protestant Church, which
had displaced the Romish Church because people had a right
to their own opinions in religious matters. However, they
carried it with a high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed
upon, in which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud
were not forgotten. An Act was passed, too, preventing any
dissenter from holding any office under any corporation. So,
the regular clergy in their triumph were soon as merry as the
King. The army being by this time disbanded, and the King
crowned, everything was to go on easily for evermore.
I must say a word here about the King's family. He had
not been long upon the throne when his brother the Duke of
Gloucester, and his sister the PRINCESS OF ORANGE, died within
a few months of each other, of small-pox. His remaining sister,
the Princess Henrietta, married the Duke of Orleans,
the brother of LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH, King of France. His
brother jAMES, DuKE OF York, was made High Admiral, and
2 F
450 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
THE PEOPLE DRANK THE KING'S HEALTH (CHARLES II)
by-and-by became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious
sort of man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women
in the country. He married, under very discreditable circum-
stances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clarendon, then
the King's principal Minister — not at all a delicate minister
either, but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace.
It became important now that the King himself should be
married ; and divers foreign monarchs, not very particular
about the character of their son - in - law, proposed their
daughters to him. The King OF PORTUGAL offered his
daughter, CATHERINE OF Braganza, and fifty thousand
pounds : in addition to which, the French King, who was
favourable to that match, offered a loan of another fifty
thousand. The King of Spain, on the other hand, offered
any one out of a dozen of Princesses, and other hopes of
gain. But the ready money carried the day, and Catherine
came over in state to her merry marriage.
The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched
CHARLES THE SECOND 451
men and shameless women ; and Catherine's merry husband
insulted and outraged her in every possible way, until she
consented to receive those worthless creatures as her very good
friends, and to degrade herself by their companionship. A
Mrs Palmer, whom the King made Lady Castlemaine, and
afterwards DuCHESS OF CLEVELAND, was one of the most
powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great
influence with the King nearly all through his reign. Another
merry lady named MoLL Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was
afterwards her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange girl
and then an actress, who really had good in her, and of whom
one of the worst things I know is, that actually she does seem
to have been fond of the King. The first DUKE of St Albans
was this orange girl's child. In like manner the son of a merry
waiting-lady, whom the King created DuCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH,
became the DUKE OF RICHMOND. Upon the whole it is not so
bad a thing to be a commoner.
The Merry Monarch was so exceeding merry among these
merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally infamous)
lords and gentlemen, that he soon got through his hundred
thousand pounds, and then, by way of raising a little pocket-
money, made a merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French
King for five millions of livres. When I think of the dignity to
which Oliver Cromwell raised England in the eyes of foreign
powers, and when I think of the manner in which he gained for
England this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined to consider
that if the Merry Monarch had been made to follow his father
for this action, he would have received his just deserts.
Though he was like his father in none of that father's greater
qualities, he was like him in being worthy of no trust. When
he sent that letter to the Parliament, from Breda, he did ex-
pressly promise that all sincere religious opinions should be
respected. Yet he was no sooner firm in his power than he
consented to one of the worst Acts of Parliament ever passed.
Under this law, every minister who should not give his solemn
assent to the Prayer-Book by a c'ertain day, was declared to be
a minister no longer, and to be deprived of his church. The
consequence of this was that some two thousand honest men
were taken from their congregations, and reduced to dire poverty
452 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
and distress. It was followed by another outrageous law, called
the Conventicle Act, by which any person above the age of
sixteen who was present at any religious service not according
to the Prayer-Book, was to be imprisoned three months for the
first offence, six for the second, and to be transported for the
third. This Act alone filled the prisons, which were then most
dreadful dungeons, to overflowing.
The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no better.
A base Parliament, usually known as the Drunken Parliament,
in consequence of its principal members being seldom sober,
had been got together to make laws against the Covenanters,
and to force all men to be of one mind in religious matters.
The Marquis of Argyle, relying on the King's honour, had
given himself up to him ; but, he was wealthy, and his enemies
wanted his wealth. He was tried for treason, on the evidence
of some private letters in which he had expressed opinions — as
well he might — more favourable to the government of the late
Lord Protector than of the present merry and religious King.
He was executed, as were two men of mark among the Coven-
anters ; and SHARP, a traitor who had once been the friend of
the Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made Archbishop of
St Andrews, to teach the Scotch how to like bishops.
Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry
Monarch undertook a war with the Dutch ; principally because
they interfered with an African company, established with the
two objects of buying gold-dust and slaves, of which the Duke
of York was a leading member. After some preliminary
hostilities, the said Duke sailed to the coast of Holland with a
fleet of ninety-eight vessels of war, and four fire-ships. This
engaged with the Dutch fleet, of no fewer than one hundred
and thirteen ships. In the great battle between the two forces,
the Dutch lost eighteen ships, four admirals, and seven thousand
men. But, the English on shore were in no mood of exultation
when they heard the news.
For, this was the year and the time of the Great Plague in
London. During the winter of one thousand six hundred and
sixty-four it had been whispered about, that some few people
had died here and there of the disease called the Plague, in
some of the unwholesome suburbs around London. News was
CHARLES THE SECOND 453
not published at that time as it is now, and some people believed
these rumours, and some disbelieved them,^ and they were soon
forgotten. But, in the month of May, one thousand six
hundred and sixty-five, it began to be said all over the town
that the disease had burst out with great violence in St Giles's,
and that the people were dying in great numbers. This soon
turned out to be awfully true. The roads out of London were
choked up by people endeavouring to escape from the infected
city, and large sums were paid for any kind of conveyance.
The disease soon spread so fast, that it was necessary to shut
up the houses in which sick people were, and to cut them off
from communication with the living. Every one of these houses
was marked on the outside of the door with a red cross, and the
words. Lord, have mercy upon us ! The streets were all deserted,
grass grew in the public ways, and there was a dreadful silence
in the air. When night came on, dismal rumblings used to be
heard, and these were the wheels of the death-carts, attended
by men with veiled faces and holding cloths to their mouths,
who rang doleful bells and cried in a loud and solemn voice,
" Bring out your dead ! " The corpses put into these carts were
buried by torchlight in great pits ; no service being performed
over them ; all men being afraid to stay for a moment on the
brink of the ghastly graves. In the general fear, children ran
away from their parents, and parents from their children.
Some who were taken ill, died alone, and without any help. Some
were stabbed or strangled by hired nurses who robbed them of
all their money, and stole the very beds on which they lay.
Some went mad, dropped from the windows, ran through the
streets, and in their pain and frenzy flung themselves into the
river.
These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked and
dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the taverns singing roaring
songs, and were stricken as they drank, and went out and died.
The fearful and superstitious persuaded themselves that they
saw supernatural sights — burning swords in the sky, gigantic
arms and darts. Others pretended that at nights vast crowds
of ghosts walked round and round the dismal pits. One mad-
man, naked, and carrying a brazier full of burning coals upon
his head, stalked through the streets, crying out that he was a
454 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
'^^P^^^
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD
Prophet, commissioned to denounce the vengeance of the Lord
on wicked London. Another always went to and fro, exclaim-
ing, " Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed ! " A
third awoke the echoes in the dismal streets, by night and by
day, and made the blood of the sick run cold, by calling out
incessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, " O, the great and dreadful
God ! "
Through the months of July and August and September,
the Great Plague raged more and more. Great fires were
lighted in the streets, in the hope of stopping the infection ;
but there was a plague of rain too, and it beat the fires out.
At last, the winds which usually arise at that time of the year
which is called the equinox, when day and night are of equal
length all over the world, began to blow, and to purify the
wretched town. The deaths began to decrease, the red crosses
slowly to disappear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open,
pale frightened faces to be seen in the streets. The Plague had
CHARLES THE SECOND
455
been in every part of England, but in close and unwholesome
London it had killed one hundred thousand people.
All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, and
as worthless as ever. All this time, the debauched lords and
gentlemen and the shameless ladies danced and gamed and
drank, and loved and hated one another, according to their
merry ways. So little humanity did the government learn from
the late affliction, that one of the first things the Parliament
did when it met at Oxford (being as yet afraid to come to
London), was to make a law, called the Five Mile Act, ex-
pressly directed against those poor ministers who, in the time
of the Plague, had manfully come back to comfort the unhappy
people. This infamous law, by forbidding them to teach in any
school, or to come within five miles of any city, town, or village,
doomed them to starvation and death.
The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of France
was now in alliance with the Dutch, though his navy was chiefly
employed in looking on while the English and Dutch fought.
The Dutch gained one victory ; and the English gained another
and a greater ; and Prince Rupert, one of the English admirals,
was out in the Channel one windy night, looking for the French
Admiral, with the intention of giving him something more to
do than he had had yet, when the gale increased to a storm, and
blew him into Saint Helen's. That night was the third of
September, one thousand six hundred and sixty-six, and that
wind fanned the Great Fire of London.
It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, on the
spot on which the Monument now stands as a remembrance of
those raging flames. It spread and spread, and burned and
burned, for three days. The nights were lighter than the days ;
in the day-time there was an immense cloud of smoke, and in
the night-time there was a great tower of fire mounting up
into the sky, which lighted the whole country landscape for ten
miles round. Showers of hot ashes rose into the air and fell on
distant places ; flying sparks carried the conflagration to great
distances, and kindled it in twenty new spots at a time ; church
steeples fell down with tremendous crashes ; houses crumbled
into cinders by the hundred and the thousand. The summer
had been intensely hot and dry, the streets were very narrow.
456 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
and the houses mostly built of wood and plaster. Nothing
could stop the tremendous fire, but the want of more houses to
burn ; nor did it stop until the whole way from the Tower to
Temple Bar was a desert, composed of the ashes of thirteen
thousand houses and eighty-nine churches.
This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occasioned
great loss and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out
people, who were obliged to lie in the fields under the open
night sky, or in hastily-made huts of mud and straw, while the
lanes and roads were rendered impassable by carts which had
broken down as they tried to save their goods. But the Fire
was a great blessing to the City afterwards, for it arose from its
ruins very much improved — built more regularly, more widely,
more cleanly and carefully, and therefore much more healthily.
It might be far more healthy than it is, but there are some
people in it still — even now, at this time, nearly two hundred
years later — so selfish, so pig-headed, and so ignorant, that I
doubt if even another Great Fire would warm them up to do
their duty.
The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London
in flames ; one poor Frenchman, who had been mad for years,
even accused himself of having with his own hand fired the first
house. There is no reasonable doubt, however, that the fire was
accidental. An inscription on the Monument long attributed it
to the Catholics; but it is removed now, and was always a
malicious and stupid untruth.
Second Part
That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, in the
merry times when his people were suffering under pestilence
and fire, he drank and gambled and flung away among his
favourites the money which the Parliament had voted for the
war. The consequence of this was that the stout-hearted
English sailors were merrily starving of want, and dying in the
streets ; while the Dutch, under their admirals De Witt and
De Ruyter, came into the River Thames, and up the River
Medway as far as Upnor, burned the guard-ships, silenced the
LONDON STREETS DURING THE PLAGUE
CHARLES THE SECOND 459
weak batteries, and did what they would to the English coast
for six whole weeks. Most of the English ships that could have
prevented them had neither powder nor shot on board ; in this
merry reign, public officers made themselves as merry as the
King did with the public money ; and when it was entrusted to
them to spend in national defences or preparations, they put it
into their own pockets with the merriest grace in the world.
Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a course as is
usually allotted to the unscrupulous ministers of bad kings. He
was impeached by his political opponents, but unsuccessfully.
The King then commanded him to withdraw from England and
retire to France, which he did, after defending himself in writing.
He was no great loss at home, and died abroad some seven
years afterwards.
There then came into power a ministry called the Cabal
Ministry, because it was composed of LORD CLIFFORD, the
Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham (a great
rascal, and the King's most powerful favourite), LORD ASHLEY,
and the Duke of Lauderdale, c. a. b. a. L. As the French
were making conquests in Flanders, the first Cabal proceeding
was to make a treaty with the Dutch, for uniting with Spain to
oppose the French. It was no sooner made than the Merry
Monarch, who always wanted to get money without being
accountable to a Parliament for his expenditure, apologised to
the King of France for having had anything to do with it, and
concluded a secret treaty with him, making himself his infamous
pensioner to the amount of two millions of livres down, and
three millions more a year ; and engaging to desert that very
Spain, to make war against those very Dutch, and to declare
himself a Catholic when a convenient time should arrive. This
religious king had lately been crying to his Catholic brother on
the subject of his strong desire to be a Catholic ; and now he
merrily concluded this treasonable conspiracy against the
country he governed, by undertaking to become one as soon as
he safely could. For all of which, though he had had ten merry
heads instead of one, he richly deserved to lose them by the
headsman's axe.
As his one merry head might have been far from safe, if
these things had been known, they were kept very quiet, and
46o A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
war was declared by France and England against the Dutch.
But a very uncommon man, afterwards most important to Eng-
lish history and to the religion and liberty of this land, arose
among them, and for many long years defeated the whole pro-
jects of France. This was William of Nassau, Prince of
Orange, son of the last Prince of Orange of the same name,
who married the daughter of Charles the First of England. He
was a young man at this time, only just of age ; but he was
brave, cool, intrepid, and wise. His father had been so detested
that, upon his death, the Dutch had abolished the authority to
which this son would have otherwise succeeded (Stadtholder it
was called), and placed the chief power in the hands of John
DE Witt, who educated this young prince. Now, the Prince
became very popular, and John de Witt's brother CORNELIUS
was sentenced to banishment on a false accusation of conspiring
to kill him. John went to the prison where he was, to take him
away to exile, in his coach ; and a great mob who collected on
the occasion, then and there cruelly murdered both the brothers.
This left the government in the hands of the Prince, who was
really the choice of the nation ; and from this time he exercised
it with the greatest vigour, against the whole power of France,
under its famous generals CONDife and Turenne, and in support
of the Protestant Religion. It was full seven years before this
war ended in a treaty of peace made at Nimeguen, and its
details would occupy a very considerable space. It is enough
to say that William of Orange established a famous character
with the whole world ; and that the Merry Monarch, adding to
and improving on his former baseness, bound himself to do
everything the King of France liked, and nothing the King of
France did not like, for a pension of one hundred thousand
pounds a year, which was afterwards doubled. Besides this,
the King of France, by means of his corrupt ambassador — who
wrote accounts of his proceedings in England, which are not
always to be believed, I think — bought our English members of
Parliament, as he wanted them. So, in point of fact, during a
considerable portion of this merry reign, the King of France was
the real King of this country.
But there was a better time to come, and it was to come
(though his royal uncle little thought so) through that very
CHARLES THE SECOND 461
William, Prince of Orange. He came over to England, saw
Mary, the elder daughter of the Duke of York, and married her.
We shall see by-and-by what came of that marriage, and why it
is never to be forgotten.
This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a
Catholic. She and her sister Anne, also a Protestant, were the
only survivors of eight children. Anne afterwards married
George, Prince of Denmark, brother to the King of that
country.
Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of sup-
posing that he was even good humoured (except when he had
everything his own way), or that he was high spirited and
honourable, I will mention here what was done to a member of
the House of Commons, Sir John Coventry. He made a
remark in a debate about taxing the theatres, which gave the
King offence. The King agreed with his illegitimate son, who
had been born abroad, and whom he had made DUKE OF MON-
MOUTH, to take the following merry vengeance. To waylay
him at night, fifteen armed men to one, and to slit his nose with
a penknife. Like master, like man. The King's favourite, the
Duke of Buckingham, was strongly suspected of setting on an
assassin to murder the DuKE OF Ormond as he was returning
home from a dinner; and that Duke's spirited son, LORD
OSSORY, was so persuaded of his guilt, that he said to him at
Court, even as he stood beside the King, " My lord, I know very
well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt upon my
father. But I give you warning, if he ever come to a violent
end, his blood shall be upon you, and wherever I meet you I
will pistol you ! I will do so, though I find you standing
behind the King's chair ; and I tell you this in his Majesty's
presence, that you may be quite sure of my doing what I
threaten." Those were merry times indeed.
There was a fellow named BLOOD, who was seized for
making, with two companions, an audacious attempt to steal the
crown, the globe, and sceptre, from the place where the jewels
were kept in the Tower. This robber, who was a swaggering
ruffian, being taken, declared that he was the man who had
endeavoured to kill the Duke of Ormond, and that he had
meant to kill the King too, but was overawed by the majesty of
462 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
his appearance, when he might otherwise have done it, as he
was bathing at Battersea. The King being but an ill-looking
fellow, I don't believe a word of this. Whether he was flattered,
or whether he knew that Buckingham had really set Blood on
to murder the Duke, is uncertain. But it is quite certain that
he pardoned this thief, gave him an estate of five hundred a
year in Ireland (which had had the honour of giving him birth),
and presented him at Court to the debauched lords and the
shameless ladies, who made a great deal of him — as I have no
doubt they would have made of the Devil himself, if the King
had introduced him.
Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted money,
and consequently was obliged to call Parliaments. In these,
the great object of the Protestants was to thwart the Catholic
Duke of York, who married a second time ; his new wife being
a young lady only fifteen years old, the Catholic sister of
the Duke of Modena. In this they were seconded by the
Protestant Dissenters, though to their own disadvantage : since,
to exclude Catholics from power, they were even willing to
exclude themselves. The King's object was to pretend to be a
Protestant, while he was really a Catholic ; to swear to the
bishops that he was devoutly attached to the English Church,
while he knew he had bargained it away to the King of France ;
and by cheating and deceiving them, and all who were attached
to royalty, to become despotic and be powerful enough to
confess what a rascal he was. Meantime, the King of France,
knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued with the King's
opponents in Parliament, as well as with the King and his
friends.
The fears that the country had of the Catholic religion being
restored, if the Duke of York should come to the throne, and
the low cunning of the King in pretending to share their alarms,
led to some very terrible results. A certain Dr TONGE, a dull
clergyman in the City, fell into the hands of a certain TiTUS
Oates, a most infamous character, who pretended to have
acquired among the Jesuits abroad a knowledge of a great plot
for the murder of the King, and the re-establishment of the
Catholic religion. Titus Oates, being produced by this unlucky
Dr Tonge and solemnly examined before the council, con-
CHARLES THE SECOND
463
tradicted himself in a thou-
sand ways, told the most
ridiculous and improbable
stories, and implicated
Coleman, the Secretary of
the Duchess of York. Now,
although what he charged
against Coleman was not
true, and although you and
I know very well that the
real dangerous Catholic plot
was that one with the King
of France of which the
Merry Monarch was himself
the head, there happened to
be found among Coleman's
papers, some letters, in which
he did praise the days of
Bloody Queen Mary, and
abuse the Protestant religion.
This was great good fortune
for Titus, as it seemed to
confirm him ; but better
still was in store. Sir
Edmundbury Godfrey,
the magistrate who had first
examined him, being unex-
pectedly found dead near
Primrose Hill, was confi-
dently believed to have been
killed by the Catholics. I
think there is no doubt that
he had been melancholy mad,
and that he killed himself;
but he had a great Protestant
funeral, and Titus was called
the Saver of the Nation, and
received a pension of twelve
hundred pounds a year.
Yeoman of Guard (Charles II)
464 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
As soon as Oates's wickedness had met with this success, up
started another villain, named WILLIAM Bedloe, who, attracted
by a reward of five hundred pounds offered for the apprehension
of the murderers of Godfrey, came forward and charged two
Jesuits and some other persons with having committed it at the
Queen's desire. Oates, going into partnership with this new
informer, had the audacity to accuse the poor Queen herself of
high treason. Then appeared a third informer, as bad as either
of the two, and accused a Catholic banker named Stayley of
having said that the King was the greatest rogue in the world
(which would not have been far from the truth), and that he
would kill him with his own hand. This banker, being at once
tried and executed, Coleman and two others were tried and
executed. Then, a miserable wretch named PRANCE, a Catholic
silversmith, being accused by Bedloe, was tortured into con-
fessing that he had taken part in Godfrey's murder, and into
accusing three other men of having committed it. Then, five
Jesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, and Prance together,
and were all found guilty, and executed on the same kind of
contradictory and absurd evidence. The Queen's physician
and three monks were next put on their trial ; but Oates and
Bedloe had for the time gone far enough, and these four were
acquitted. The public mind, however, was so full of a Catholic
plot, and so strong against the Duke of York, that James
consented to obey a written order from his brother, and to go
with his family to Brussels, provided that his rights should
never be sacrificed in his absence to the Duke of Monmouth.
The House of Commons, not satisfied with this as the King
hoped, passed a bill to exclude the Duke from ever succeeding
to the throne. In return, the King dissolved the Parliament.
He had deserted his old favourite, the Duke of Buckingham,
who was now in the opposition.
To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in
this merry reign, would occupy a hundred pages. Because the
people would not have bishops, and were resolved to stand by
their solemn League and Covenant, such cruelties were inflicted
upon them as make the blood run cold. Ferocious dragoons
galloped through the country to punish the peasants for desert-
ing the churches ; sons were hanged up at their fathers' doors
CHARLES THE SECOND 465
for refusing to disclose where their fathers were concealed ;
wives were tortured to death for not betraying their husbands ;
people were taken out of their fields and gardens, and shot on
the public roads without trial ; lighted matches were tied to the
fingers of prisoners, and a most horrible torment called the Boot
was invented, and constantly applied, which ground and mashed
the victims' legs with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as
well as prisoners. All the prisons were full; all the gibbets
were heavy with bodies ; murder and plunder devastated the
whole country. In spite of all, the Covenanters were by no
means to be dragged into the churches, and persisted in wor-
shipping God as they thought right. A body of ferocious
Highlanders, turned upon them from the mountains of their
own country, had no greater effect than the English dragoons
under Grahame of Claverhouse, the most cruel and rapacious
of all their enemies, whose name will ever be cursed through the
length and breadth of Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever
aided and abetted all these outrages. But he fell at last ; for,
when the injuries of the Scottish people were at their height, he
was seen, in his coach- and-six coming across a moor, by a body
of men, headed by one John Balfour, who were waiting for
another of their oppressors. Upon this they cried out that
Heaven had delivered him into their hands, and killed him with
many wounds. If ever a man deserved such a death, I think
Archbishop Sharp did.
It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch —
strongly suspected of having goaded the Scottish people on,
that he might have an excuse for a greater army than the Par-
liament were willing to give him — sent down his son, the Duke
of Monmouth, as commander-in-chief, with instructions to
attack the Scottish rebels, or Whigs as they were called, when-
ever he came up with them. Marching with ten thousand men
from Edinburgh, he found them, in number four or five thou-
sand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge, by the Clyde. They were
soon dispersed ; and Monmouth showed a more humane char-
acter towards them, than he had shown towards that Member
of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit with a pen-
knife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their bitter foe, and
sent Claverhouse to finish them.
466 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
As the Duke of York became more and more unpopular,
the Duke of Monmouth became more and more popular. It
would have been decent in the latter not to have voted in
favour of the renewed bill for the exclusion of James from the
throne ; but he did so, much to the King's amusement, who used
to sit in the House of Lords by the fire, hearing the debates,
which he said were as good as a play. The House of Commons
passed the bill by a large majority, and it was carried up to the
House of Lords by Lord Russell, one of the best of the
leaders on the Protestant side. It was rejected there, chiefly
because the bishops helped the King to get rid of it ; and the
fear of Catholic plots revived again. There had been another
got up, by a fellow out of Newgate, named Dangerfield,
which is more famous than it deserves to be, under the name of
the Meal-Tub Plot. This jail-bird having been got out of
Newgate by a Mrs Cellier, a Catholic nurse, had turned
Catholic himself, and pretended that he knew of a plot among
the Presbyterians against the King's life. This was very
pleasant to the Duke of York, who hated the Presbyterians,
who returned the compliment. He gave Dangerfield twenty
guineas, and sent him to the King his brother. But Danger-
field, breaking down altogether in his charge, and being sent
back to Newgate, almost astonished the Duke out of his five
senses by suddenly sweadng that the Catholic nurse had put
that false design into his head, and that what he really knew
about, was, a Catholic plot against the King ; the evidence of
which would be found in some papers, concealed in a meal-tub
in Mrs Cellier's house. There they were, of course — for he had
put them there himself — and so the tub gave the name to the
plot. But, the nurse was acquitted on her trial, and it came to
nothing.
Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and
was strong against the succession of the Duke of York. The
House of Commons, aggravated to the utmost extent, as we
may well suppose, by suspicions of the King's conspiracy with
the King of France, made a desperate point of the exclusion still,
and were bitter against the Catholics generally. So unjustly
bitter were they, I grieve to say, that they impeached the vener-
able Lord Stafford, a Catholic nobleman seventy years old, of a
CHARLES THE SECOND 467
design to kill the King. The witnesses were that atrocious
.Xiates and two other birds of the same feather. He was found
guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as it was false, and was be-
headed on Tower Hill. The people were opposed to him when
he first appeared upon the scaffold ; but, when he had addressed
them and shown them how innocent he was and how wickedly
he was sent there, their better nature was aroused, and they said,
" We believe you, my Lord. God bless you, my Lord ! "
The House of Commons refused to let the King have any
money until he should consent to the Exclusion Bill; but, as he
could get it and did get it from his master the King of France,
he could afford to hold them very cheap. He called a Parlia-
ment at Oxford, to which he went down with a great show of
being armed and protected as if he were in danger of his life,
and to which the opposition members also went armed and pro-
tected, alleging that they were in fear of the Papists, who were
numerous among the King's guards. However, they went on
with the Exclusion Bill, and were so earnest upon it that they
would have carried it again, if the King had not popped his
crown and state robes into a sedan-chair, bundled himself into
it along with them, hurried down to the chamber where the
House of Lords met, and dissolved the Parliament. After
wliich he scampered home, and the members of Parliament
scampered home too, as fast as their legs could carry them.
The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under the
law which excluded Catholics from public trust, no right what-
ever to public employment. Nevertheless, he was openly
employed as the King's representative in Scotland, and there
gratified his sullen and cruel nature to his heart's content by
directing the dreadful cruelties against the Covenanters. There
were two ministers named Cargill and Cameron who had
escaped from the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and who returned
to Scotland, and raised the miserable but still brave and un-
subdued Covenanters afresh, under the name of Cameronians.
As Cameron publicly posted a declaration that the King was a
forsworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unhappy followers
after he was slain in battle. The Duke of York, who was par-
ticularly fond of the Boot and derived great pleasure from
having it applied, offered their lives to some of these people, if
468 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
they would cry on the scaffold " God save the King ! " But
their relations, friends, and countrymen, had been so barbarously
tortured and murdered in this merry reign, that they preferred
to die, and did die. The Duke then obtained his merry brother's
permission to hold a Parliament in Scotland, which first, with
most shameless deceit, confirmed the laws for securing the Pro-
testant religion against Popery, and then declared that nothing
must or should prevent the succession of the Popish Duke.
After this double-faced beginning, it established an oath which
no human being could understand, but which everybody was to
take, as a proof that his religion was the lawful religion. The
Earl of Argyle, taking it with the explanation that he did not
consider it to prevent him from favouring any alteration either
in the Church or State which was not inconsistent with the Pro-
testant religion or with his loyalty, was tried for high treason
before a Scottish jury of which the MARQUIS OF MONTROSE
was foreman, and was found guilty. He escaped the scaffold,
for that time, by getting away, in the disguise of a page, in the
train of his daughter, LADY SOPHiA LINDSAY. It was
absolutely proposed, by certain members of the Scottish
Council, that this lady should be whipped through the streets
of Edinburgh. But this was too much even for the Duke, who
had the manliness then (he had very little at most times) to
remark that Englishmen were not accustomed to treat ladies in
that manner. In those merry times, nothing could equal the
brutal servility of the Scottish fawners, but the conduct of
similar degraded beings in England.
After the settlement of these little affairs, the Duke returned
to England, and soon resumed his place at the Council, and his
office of High Admiral — all this by his brother's favour, and in
open defiance of the law. It would have been no loss to the
country, if he had been drowned when his ship, in going to
Scotland to fetch his family, struck on a sand-bank, and was
lost with two hundred souls on board. But he escaped in a
boat with some friends; and the sailors were so brave and
unselfish, that, when they saw him rowing away, they gave three
cheers, while they themselves were going down for ever.
The Merry Monarch, having got rid of his Parliament, went
to work to make himself despotic, with all speed. Having had
CHARLES THE SECOND 469
the villany to order the execution of OLIVER Plunket,
Bishop OF Armagh, falsely accused of a plot to establish
Popery in that country by means of a French army — the very
thing this royal traitor was himself trying to do at home — and
having tried to ruin Lord Shaftesbury, and failed — he turned
his hand to controlling the corporations all over the country ;
because, if he could only do that, he could get what juries he
chose, to bring in perjured verdicts, and could get what members
he chose returned to Parliament. These merry times produced
and made Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, a drunken
ruffian of the name of Jeffreys ; a red-faced, swollen, bloated,
horrible creature, with a bullying, roaring voice, and a more
savage nature perhaps than was ever lodged in any human
breast. This monster was the Merry Monarch's especial
favourite, and he testified his admiration of him by giving him
a ring from his own finger, which the people used to call Judge
Jeffreys's Bloodstone. Him the King employed to go about
and bully the corporations, beginning with London ; or, as
Jeffreys himself elegantly called it, " to give them a lick with
the rough side of his tongue." And he did it so thoroughly,
that they soon became the basest and most sycophantic bodies
in the kingdom — except the University of Oxford, which, in
that respect, was quite pre-eminent and unapproachable.
Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the King's failure
against him), LORD WILLIAM RusSELL, the Duke of Monmouth,
Lord Howard, Lord Jersey, Algernon Sidney, John
Hampden (grandson of the great Hampden), and some others,
used to hold a council together after the dissolution of the
Parliament, arranging what it might be necessary to do, if the
King carried his Popish plot to the utmost height. Lord
Shaftesbury, having been much the most violent of this party,
brought two violent men into their secrets — RuMSEY, who had
been a soldier in the Republican army, and WEST, a lawyer.
These two knew an old officer of Cromwell's, called RUMBOLD,
who had married a maltster's widow, and so had come into
possession of a solitary dwelling called the Rye House, near
Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said to them what a
capital place this house of his would be from which to shoot at
the King, who often passed there going to and from Newmarket.
470 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Old London Street Lamp
They liked the idea, and
entertained it. But, one of
their body gave informa-
tion; and they, together
with Shepherd, a wine
merchant. Lord Russell,
Algernon Sidney, LORD
Essex, Lord Howard,
and Hampden, were all
arrested.
Lord Russell might
have easily escaped, but
scorned to do so, being
innocent of any wrong ;
Lord Essex might have
easily escaped, but scorned
to do so, lest his flight
should prejudice Lord
Russell. But it weighed
upon his mind that he
had brought into their
council, Lord Howard —
who now turned a miser-
able traitor — against a
great dislike Lord Russell
had always had of him.
He could not bear the
reflection, and destroyed
himself before Lord
Russell was brought to
trial at the Old Bailey.
He knew very well that
he had nothing to hope,
having always been man-
ful in the Protestant cause
against the two false
brothers, the one on the
throne, and the other
standing next to it. He
CHARLES THE SECOND 471
had a wife, one of the noblest and best of women, who
acted as his secretary on his trial, who comforted him in
his prison, who supped with him on the night before he died,
and whose love and virtue and devotion have made her
name imperishable. Of course, he was found guilty, and was
sentenced to be beheaded in Lincoln's Inn-fields, not many
yards from his own house. When he had parted from his
children on the evening before his death, his wife still stayed
with him _until_ ten o'clock at night ; and when their final
separation in this world was over, and he had kissed her many
times, he still sat for a long while in his prison, talking of her
goodness. Hearing the rain fall fast at that time, he calmly
said, " Such a rain to-morrow will spoil a great show, which is a
dull thing on a rainy day." At midnight he went to bed, and
slept till four ; even when his servant called him, he fell asleep
again while his clothes were being made ready. He rode to the
scaffold in his own carriage, attended by two famous clergymen,
TiLLOTSON and Burnet, and sang a psalm to himself very
softly, as he went along. He was as quiet and as steady as if
he had been going out for an ordinary ride. After saying that
he was surprised to see so great a crowd, he laid down his head
upon the block, as if upon the pillow of his bed, and had it
struck off at the second blow. His noble wife was busy for him
even then ; for that true-hearted lady printed and widely
circulated his last words, of which he had given her a copy.
They made the blood of all the honest men in England boil.
The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the very
same day by pretending to believe that the accusation against
Lord Russell was true, and by calling the King, in a written
paper, the Breath of their Nostrils and the Anointed of the
Lord. This paper the Parliament afterwards caused to be burned
by the common hangman ; which I am sorry for, as I wish it
had been framed and glazed and hung up in some public place,
as a monument of baseness for the scorn of mankind.
Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreys
presided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering and swelling
with rage. " I pray God, Mr Sidney," said this Chief Justice of
a merry reign, after passing sentence, " to work in you a temper
fit to go to the other world, for I see you are not fit for this."
472 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
" My lord," said the prisoner, composedly holding out his arm,
" feel my pulse, and see if I be disordered. I thank Heaven I
never was in better temper than I am now." Algernon Sidney
was executed on Tower Hill, on the seventh of December, one
thousand six hundred and eighty-three. He died a hero, and
died, in his own words, " For that good old cause in which he
had been engaged from his youth, and for which God had so
often and so wonderfully declared himself."
The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the
Duke of York, very jealous, by going about the country in a
royal sort of way, playing at the people's games, becoming
godfather to their children, and even touching for the King's
evil, or stroking the faces of the sick to cure them — though, for
the matter of that, I should say he did them about as much
good as any crowned king could have done. His father had
got him to write a letter, confessing his having had a part in
the conspiracy, for which Lord Russell had been beheaded ; but
he was ever a weak man, and as soon as he had written it, he
was ashamed of it and got it back again. For this, he was
banished to the Netherlands ; but he soon returned and had an
interview with his father, unknown to his uncle. It would seem
that he was coming into the Merry Monarch's favour again,
and that the Duke of York was sliding out of it, when Death
appeared to the merry galleries at Whitehall, and astonished
the debauched lords and gentlemen, and the shameless ladies,
very considerably.
On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six
hundred and eighty-five, the merry pensioner and servant of
the King of France fell down in a fit of apoplexy. By the
Wednesday his case was hopeless, and on the Thursday he was
told so. As he made a difficulty about taking the sacrament
from the Protestant Bishop of Bath, the Duke of York got all
who were present away from the bed, and asked his brother, in
a whisper, if he should send for a Catholic priest ? The King
replied, " For God's sake, brother, do ! " The Duke smuggled
in, up the back stairs, disguised in a wig and gown, a priest
named HUDDLESTON, who had saved the King's life after the
battle of Worcester: telling him that this worthy man in the
wig had once saved his body, and was now come to save his soul.
JAMES THE SECOND 473
The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died
before noon on the next day, which was Friday, the sixth.
Two of the last things he said were of a human sort, and your
remembrance will give him the full benefit of them. When the
Queen sent to say she was too unwell to attend him and to ask
his pardon, he said, " Alas ! poor woman, she beg my pardon !
I beg hers with all my heart. Take back that answer to her."
And he also said, in reference to Nell Gwyn, " Do not let poor
Nelly starve."
He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth
of his reign.
CHAPTER XXXVI
ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND
King James the Second was a man so very disagreeable,
that even the best of historians has favoured his brother Charles,
as becoming, by comparison, quite a pleasant character. The
one object of his short reign was to re-establish the Catholic
religion in England ; and this he doggedly pursued with such a
stupid obstinacy, that his career very soon came to a close.
The first thing he did, was to assure his council that he
would make it his endeavour to preserve the Government, both
in Church and State, as it was by law established ; and that he
would always take care to defend and support the Church.
Great public acclamations were raised over this fair speech, and
a great deal was said, from the pulpits and elsewhere, about the
word of a King which was never broken, by credulous people
who little supposed he had formed a secret council for Catholic
affairs, of which a mischievous Jesuit, called FATHER Petre,
was one of the chief members. With tears of joy in his eyes,
he received, as the beginning of his pension from the King of
France, five hundred thousand livres ; yet, with a mixture of
meanness and arrogance that belonged to his contemptible
character, he was always jealous of making some show of being
independent of the King of France, while he pocketed his
money. As — notwithstanding his publishing two papers in
474
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
favour of Popery (and not likely to do it much service, I should
think) written by the King, his brother, and found in his strong-
box ; and his open display of himself attending mass — the
Parliament was very obsequious, and granted him a large sum
of money, he began his reign with a belief that he could do
what he pleased, and with a determination to do it.
Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose of
Titus Oates. He was tried for perjury, a fortnight after the
coronation, and besides being very heavily fined, was sentenced
to stand twice in the pillory, to be whipped from Aldgate to
Newgate one day, and from Newgate to Tyburn two days after-
wards, and to stand in the pillory five times a year as long as he
lived. This fearful sentence was actually inflicted on the rascal.
Being unable to stand after his first flogging, he was dragged
on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and flogged as he was
drawn along. He was so strong a villain that he did not die
under the torture, but lived to be afterwards pardoned and
rewarded, though not to be ever believed in any more. Danger-
field, the only other one of that crew left alive, was not so for-
tunate. He was almost killed by a whipping from Newgate to
JAMES THE SECOND 475
Tyburn, and, as if that were not punishment enough, a ferocious
barrister of Gray's Inn gave him a poke in the eye with his
cane, which caused his death ; for which the ferocious barrister
was deservedly tried and executed.
As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Monmouth
went from Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended a meeting of
Scottish exiles held there, to concert measures for a rising in
England. It was agreed that Argyle should effect a landing in
Scotland, and Monmouth in England ; and that two Englishmen
should be sent with Argyle to be in his confidence, and two
Scotchmen with the Duke of Monmouth.
Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But, two of
his men being taken prisoners at the Orkney Islands, the
Government became aware of his intention, and was able to
act against him with such vigour as to prevent his raising more
than two or three thousand Highlanders, although he sent a
fiery cross, by trusty messengers, from clan to clan and from
glen to glen, as the custom then was when those wild people
were to be excited by their chiefs. As he was moving towards
Glasgow with his small force, he was betrayed by some of his
followers, taken, and carried, with his hands tied behind his back,
to his old prison in Edinburgh Castle. James ordered him to
be executed, on his old shamefully unjust sentence, within three
days; and he appears to have been anxious that his legs
should have been pounded with his old favourite the boot.
However, the boot was not applied ; he was simply beheaded,
and his head was set upon the top of Edinburgh Jail. One of
those Englishmen who had been assigned to him was that old
soldier Rumbold, the master of the Rye House. He was sorely
wounded, and within a week after Argyle had suffered with
great courage, was brought up for trial, lest he should die and
disappoint the King. He, too, was executed, after defending
himself with great spirit, and saying that he did not believe that
God had made the greater part of mankind to carry saddles on
their backs and bridles in their mouths, and to be ridden by a
few, booted and spurred for the purpose-:-in which I thoroughly
agree with Rumbold.
The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained and
partly through idling his time away, was five or six weeks be-
476 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
hind his friend when he landed at Lyme, in Dorset : having at
his right hand an unlucky nobleman called LORD Grey of
Werk, who of himself would have ruined a far more promising
expedition. He immediately set up his standard in the market-
place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant, and a Popish usurper,
and I know not what else ; charging him, not only with what
he had done, which was bad enough, but with what neither he
nor anybody else had done, such as setting fire to London, and
poisoning the late King. Raising some four thousand men by
these means, he marched on to Taunton, where there were many
Protestant dissenters who were strongly opposed to the Catholics.
Here, both the rich and poor turned out to receive him, ladies
waved a welcome to him from all the windows as he passed
along the streets, flowers were strewn in his way, and every
compliment and honour that could be devised was showered
upon him. Among the rest, twenty young ladies came forward,
in their best clothes, and in their brightest beauty, and gave him
a Bible ornamented with their own fair hands, together with
other presents.
JAMES THE SECOND 477
Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself King,
and went on to Bridgewater. But, here the Government troops,
under the Earl of Feversham, were close at hand ; and he
was so dispirited at finding that he made but few powerful
friends after all, that it was a question whether he should dis-
band his army and endeavour to escape. It was resolved, at
the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, to make a night attack
on the King's army, as it lay encamped on the edge of a morass
called Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded by the
same unlucky lord, who was not a brave man. He gave up
the battle almost at the first obstacle — which was a deep drain ;
and although the poor countrymen, who had turned out for
Monmouth, fought bravely with scythes, poles, pitchforks, and
such poor weapons as they had, they were soon dispersed by
the trained soldiers, and fled in all directions. When the Duke
of Monmouth himself fled, was not known in the confusion ; but
the unlucky Lord Grey was taken early next day, and then
another of the party was taken, who confessed that he had
parted from the Duke only four hours before. Strict search
being made, he was found disguised as a peasant, hidden in
a ditch under fern and nettles, with a few peas in his pocket
which he had gathered in the fields to eat. The only other
articles he had upon him were a few papers and little books :
one of the latter being a strange jumble, in his own writing, of
charms, songs, recipes, and prayers. He was completely broken.
He wrote a miserable letter to the King, beseeching and en-
treating to be allowed to see him. When he was taken to
London, and conveyed bound into the King's presence, he
crawled to him on his knees, and made a most degrading
exhibition. As James never forgave or relented towards any-
body, he was not likely to soften towards the issuer of the Lyme
proclamation, so he told the suppliant to prepare for death.
On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six hundred and
eighty-five, this unfortunate favourite of the people was brought
out to die on Tower Hill. The crowd was immense, and the
tops of all the houses were covered with gazers. He had seen
his wife, the daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, in the Tower,
and had talked much of a lady whom he loved far better— the
Lady Harriet Wentworth — who was one of the last
478 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
persons he remembered in this life. Before laying down his
head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, and told the
executioner that he feared it was not sharp enough, and that
the axe was not heavy enough. On the executioner replying
that it was of the proper kind, the Duke said, " I pray you have
a care, and do not use me so awkwardly as you used my Lord
Russell." The executioner, made nervous by this, and trembling,
struck once and merely gashed him in the neck. Upon this, the
Duke of Monmouth raised his head and looked the man re-
proachfully in the face. Then he struck twice, and then thrice,
and then threw down the axe, and cried out in a voice of horror
that he could not finish that work. The sheriffs, however,
threatening him with what should be done to himself if he did
not, he took it up again and struck a fourth time and a fifth
time. Then the wretched head at last fell off, and James, Duke
of Monmouth, was dead, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. He
was a showy, graceful man, with many popular qualities, and
had found much favour in the open hearts of the English.
The atrocities, committed by the Government, which followed
this Monmouth rebellion, form the blackest and most lamentable
page in English history. The poor peasants, having been dis-
persed with great loss, and their leaders having been taken, one
would think that the implacable King might have been satisfied.
But no; he let loose upon them, among other intolerable
monsters, a Colonel Kirk, who had served against the Moors,
and whose soldiers — called by the people Kirk's lambs, because
they bore a lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of Christianity
— were worthy of their leader. The atrocities committed by
these demons in human shape are far too horrible to be related
here. It is enough to say, that besides most ruthlessly murder-
ing and robbing them, and ruining them by making them buy
their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it was one of
Kirk's favourite amusements, as he and his officers sat drinking
after dinner, and toasting the King, to have batches of prisoners
hanged outside the windows for the company's diversion ; and
that when their feet quivered in the convulsions of death, he
used to swear that they should have music to their dancing, and
would order the drums to beat and the trumpets to play. The
detestable King informed him, as an acknowledgment of these
FLIGHT OF MONMOUTH
JAMES THE SECOND 481
services, that he was " very well satisfied with his proceedings."
But the King's great delight was in the proceedings of Jeffreys,
now a peer, who went down into the west, with four other
judges, to try persons accused of having had any share in the
rebellion. The King pleasantly called this "Jeffreys's cam-
paign." The people down in that part of the country remember
it to this day as The Bloody Assize.
It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady, Mrs
Alicia Lisle, the widow of one of the judges of Charles the
First (who had been murdered abroad by some Royalist
assassins), was charged with having given shelter in her house
to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three times the jury refused
to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied and frightened them into
that false verdict. When he had extorted it from them, he said,
" Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she had been my
own mother, I would have found her guilty " ; — as I daresay he
would. He sentenced her to be burned alive, that very after-
noon. The clergy of the cathedral and some others interfered
in her favour, and she was beheaded within a week. As a high
mark of his approbation, the King made Jeffreys Lord Chan-
cellor; and he then went on to Dorchester, to Exeter, to
Taunton, and to Wells. It is astonishing, when we read of the
enormous injustice and barbarity of this beast, to know that no
one struck him dead on the judgment-seat. It was enough for
any man or woman to be accused by an enemy, before Jeffreys,
to be found guilty of high treason. One man who pleaded not
guilty, he ordered to be taken out of court upon the instant, and
hanged ; and this so terrified the prisoners in general that they
mostly pleaded guilty at once. At Dorchester alone, in the
course of a few days, Jeffreys hanged eighty people ; besides
whipping, transporting, imprisoning, and selling as slaves, great
numbers. He executed, in all, two hundred and fifty, or three
hundred.
These executions took place, among the neighbours and
friends of the sentenced, in thirty-six towns and villages. Their
bodies were mangled, steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch and
tar, and hung up by the roadsides, in the streets, over the very
churches. The sight and smell of heads and limbs, the hissing
and bubbling of the infernal caldrons, and the tears and terrors
2 H
482 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
of the people, were dreadful beyond all description. One rustic,
who was forced to steep the remains in the black pot, was ever
afterwards called "Tom Boilman." The hangman has ever
since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name went
hanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys.
You will hear much of the horrors of the great French Revolu-
tion. Many and terrible they were, there is no doubt ; but I
know of nothing worse, done by the maddened people of France
in that awful time, than was done by the highest judge in Eng-
land, with the express approval of the King of England, in The
Bloody Assize.
Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money for
himself as of misery for others, and he sold pardons wholesale
to fill his pockets. The King ordered, at one time, a thousand
prisoners to be given to certain of his favourites, in order
that they might bargain with them for their pardons. The
young ladies of Taunton who had presented the Bible, were
bestowed upon the maids of honour at court ; and those precious
ladies made very hard bargains with them indeed. When The
Bloody Assize was at its most dismal height, the King was
diverting himself with horse-races in the very place where Mrs
Lisle had been executed. When Jeffreys had done his worst,
and came home again, he was particularly complimented in the
Royal Gazette ; and when the King heard that through
drunkenness and raging he was very ill, his odious Majesty
remarked that such another man could not easily be found in
England. Besides all this, a former sheriff of London, named
Cornish, was hanged within sight of his own house, after an
abominably conducted trial, for having had a share in the Rye
House Plot, on evidence given by Rumsey, which that villain
was obliged to confess was directly opposed to the evidence he
had given on the trial of Lord Russell. And on the very same
day, a worthy widow, named Elizabeth Gaunt, was burned
alive at Tyburn, for having sheltered a wretch who himself gave
evidence against her. She settled the fuel about herself with
her own hands, so that the flames should reach her quickly ; and
nobly said with her last breath, that she had obeyed the sacred
command of God, to give refuge to the outcast, and not to be-
tray the wanderer.
JAMES THE SECOND 483
After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, mutilating,
exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling into slavery, of his
unhappy subjects, the King not unnaturally thought that he
could do whatever he would. So, he went to work to change
the religion of the country with all possible speed ; and what he
did was this.
He first of all tried to get rid of what was called the Test
Act — which prevented the Catholics from holding public em-
ployments— by his own power of dispensing with the penalties.
He tried it in one case, and, eleven of the twelve judges deciding
in his favour, he exercised it in three others, being those of
three dignitaries of University College, Oxford, who had
become Papists, and whom he kept in their places and sanc-
tioned. He revived the hated Ecclesiastical Commission, to
get rid of COMPTON, Bishop of London, who manfully opposed
him. He solicited the Pope to favour England with an am-
bassador, which the Pope (who was a sensible man then) rather
unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre before the eyes of
the people on all possible occasions. He favoured the establish-
ment of convents in several parts of London. He was delighted
to have the streets, and even the court itself, filled with Monks
and Friars in the habits of their orders. He constantly en-
deavoured to make Catholics of the Protestants about him.
He held private interviews, which he called " closetings," with
those Members of Parliament who held offices, to persuade them
to consent to the design he had in view. When they did not
consent, they were removed, or resigned of themselves, and
their places were given to Catholics. He displaced Protestant
officers from the army, by every means in his power, and got
Catholics into their places too. He tried the same thing with
the corporations, and also (though not so successfully) with the
Lord Lieutenants of counties. To terrify the people into the
endurance of all these measures, he kept an army of fifteen
thousand men encamped on Hounslow Heath, where mass was
openly performed in the General's tent, and where priests went
among the soldiers endeavouring to persuade them to become
Catholics. For circulating a paper among those men advising
them to be true to their religion, a Protestant clergyman, named
Johnson, the chaplain of the late Lord Russell, was actually
484 A CHILD'S fflSTORY OF ENGLAND
sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, and was actually-
whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dismissed his own
brother-in-law from his Council because he was a Protestant,
and made a Privy Councillor of the before-mentioned Father
Petre. He handed Ireland over to Richard Talbot, Earl
OF Tyrconnell, a worthless, dissolute knave, who played the
same game there for his master, and who played the deeper
game for himself of one day putting it under the protection of
the French King. In going to these extremities, every man of
sense and judgment among the Catholics, from the Pope to a
porter, knew that the King was a mere bigoted fool, who would
undo himself and the cause he sought to advance ; but he was
deaf to all reason, and, happily for England ever afterwards,
went tumbling off his throne in his own blind way.
A spirit began to arise in the country, which the besotted
blunderer little expected. He first found it out in the University
of Cambridge. Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford,
without any opposition, he tried to make a monk a master of
arts at Cambridge ; which attempt the University resisted, and
defeated him. He then went back to his favourite Oxford.
On the death of the President of Magdalen College, he com-
manded that there should be elected to succeed him, one Mr
Anthony Farmer, whose only recommendation was, that he
was of the King's religion. The University plucked up courage
at last, and refused. The King substituted another man, and
it still refused, resolving to stand by its own election of a
Mr Hough. The dull tyrant, upon this, punished Mr Hough,
and iive-and-twenty more, by causing them to be expelled and
declared incapable of holding any church preferment ; then he
proceeded to what he supposed to be his highest step, but to
what was, in fact, his last plunge headforemost in his tumble off
his throne.
He had issued a declaration that there should be no religious
tests or penal laws, in order to let in the Catholics more easily ;
but the Protestant dissenters, unmindful of themselves, had
gallantly joined the regular church in opposing it tooth and
nail. The King and Father Petre now resolved to have this
read, on a certain Sunday, in all the churches, and to order it to
be circulated for that purpose by the bishops. The latter took
JAMES THE SECOND 485
counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in dis-
grace ; and they resolved that the declaration should not be
read, and that they would petition the King against it. The
Archbishop himself wrote out the petition, and six bishops went
into the King's bedchamber the same night to present it, to his
infinite astonishment. Next day was the Sunday fixed for the
reading, and it was only read by two hundred clergymen out of
ten thousand. The King resolved against all advice to pro-
secute the bishops in the Court of King's Bench, and within
three weeks they were summoned before the Privy Council, and
committed to the Tower. As the six bishops were taken to
that dismal place, by water, the people who were assembled in
immense numbers fell upon their knees, and wept for them, and
prayed for them. When they got to the Tower, the officers and
soldiers on guard besought them for their blessing. While they
were confined there, the soldiers everyday drank to their release
with loud shouts. When they were brought up to the Court of
King's Bench for their trial, which the Attorney-General said
was for the high offence of censuring the Government, and
giving their opinion about affairs of state, they were attended
by similar multitudes, and surrounded by a throng of noblemen
and gentlemen. When the jury went out at seven o'clock at
night to consider of their verdict, everybody (except the King)
knew that they would rather starve than yield to the King's
brewer, who was one of them, and wanted a verdict for his
customer. When they came into court next morning, after
resisting the brewer all night, and gave a verdict of not guilty,
such a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as it had never heard
before ; and it was passed on among the people away to Temple .
Bar, and away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to the
east, but passed to the west too, until it reached the camp at
Hounslow, where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it up and
echoed it. And still, when the dull King, who was then with
Lord Feversham, heard the mighty roar, asked in alarm what it
was, and was told that it was " nothing but the acquittal of the
bishops," he said, in his dogged way, " Call you that nothing ?
It is so much the worse for them."
Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given
birth to a son, which Father Petre rather thought was owing to
486 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Saint Winifred. But I doubt if Saint Winifred had much to
do with it as the King's friend, inasmuch as the entirely new
prospect of a Catholic successor (for both the King's daughters
were Protestants) determined the EARLS OF SHREWSBURY,
Danby, and Devonshire, Lord Lumley, the Bishop of
London, Admiral Russell, and Colonel Sidney, to
invite the Prince of Orange over to England. The Royal
Mole, seeing his danger at last, made, in his fright, many great
concessions, besides raising an army of forty thousand men ;
but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the Second
to cope with. His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous,
and his mind was resolved.
For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for Eng-
land, a great wind from the west prevented the departure of his
fleet. Even when the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was dis-
persed by a storm, and was obliged to put back to refit. At
last, on the first of November, one thousand six hundred and
eighty-eight, the Protestant east wind, as it was long called,
began to blow ; and on the third, the people of Dover and the
people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing gallantly
by, between the two places. On Monday, the fifth, it anchored
at Torbay in Devonshire, and the Prince, with a splendid
retinue of officers and men, marched into Exeter. But the
people in that western part of the country had suffered so much
in The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart. Few people
joined him ; and he began to think of returning, and publishing
the invitation he had received from those lords, as his justifica-
tion for having come at all. At this crisis, some of the gentry
joined him ; the Royal army began to falter ; an engagement
was signed, by which all who set their hand to it declared that
they would support one another in defence of the laws and
liberties of the three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and
of the Prince of Orange. From that time, the cause received no
check ; the greatest towns in England began, one after another,
to declare for the Prince ; and he knew that it was all safe with
him when the University of Oxford offered to melt down its
plate, if he wanted any money.
By this time the King was running about in a pitiable way,
touching people for the King's evil in one place, reviewing his
JAMES THE SECOND
487
FLIGHT OF JAMES II
troops in another, and bleeding from the nose in a third. The
young Prince was sent to Portsmouth, Father Petre went off
like a shot to France, and there was a general and swift dis-
persal of all the priests and friars. One after another, the
King's most important officers and friends deserted him and
went over to the Prince. In the night, his daughter Anne fled
from Whitehall Palace; and the Bishop of London, who had
once been a soldier, rode before her with a drawn sword in his
hand, and pistols at his saddle. " God help me," cried the
miserable King : " my very children have forsaken me ! " In
his wildness, after debating with such lords as were in London,
whether he should or should not call a Parliament, and after
naming three of them to negotiate with the Prince, he resolved
to fly to France. He had the little Prince of Wales brought
back from Portsmouth; and the child and the Queen crossed
the river to Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable wet night,
and got safely away. This was on the night of the ninth of
December.
488
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
CAPTURE OF JUDGE JEFFREYS
At one o'clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King,
who had, in the meantime, received a letter from the Prince of
Orange, stating his objects, got out of bed, told LORD NORTH-
UMBERLAND who lay in his room not to open the door until
the usual hour in the morning, and went down. the back stairs
(the same, I suppose, by which the priest in the wig and gown
had come up to his brother) and crossed the river in a small
boat : sinking the great seal of England by the way. Horses
having been provided, he rode, accompanied by SiR EDWARD
Hales, to Feversham, where he embarked in a Custom House
Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting more ballast, ran into
the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fishermen and smugglers
crowded about the boat, and informed the King of their sus-
picions that he was a " hatchet-faced Jesuit." As they took his
money and would not let him go, he told them who he was, and
that the Prince of Orange wanted to take his life ; and he
began to scream for a boat — and then to cry, because he had
lost a piece of wood on his ride which he called a fragment of
JAMES THE SECOND 489
Our Saviour's cross. He put himself into the hands of the Lord
Lieutenant of the county, and his detention was made known
to the Prince of Orange at Windsor — who, only wanting to get
rid of him, and not caring where he went, so that he went
away, was very much disconcerted that they did not let him go.
However, there was nothing for it but to have him brought
back, with some state in the way of Life Guards, to Whitehall.
And as soon as he got there, in his infatuation, he heard mass,
and set a Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner.
The people had been thrown into the strangest state of con-
fusion by his flight, and had taken it into their heads that the
Irish part of the army were going to murder the Protestants.
Therefore, they set the bells a ringing, and lighted watch-fires,
and burned Catholic Chapels, and looked about in all directions
for Father Petre and the Jesuits, while the Pope's ambassador
was running away in the dress of a footman. They found no
Jesuits; but a man, who had once been a frightened witness
before Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen drunken face looking
through a window down at Wapping, which he well remem-
bered. The face was in a sailor's dress, but he knew it to be
the face of that accursed Judge, and he seized him. The
people, to their lasting honour, did not tear him to pieces.
After knocking him about a little, they took him, in the basest
agonies of terror, to the Lord Mayor, who sent him, at his own
shrieking petition, to the Tower for safety. There he died.
Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted bon-
fires and made rejoicings, as if they had any reason to be glad
to have the King back again. But, his stay was very short, for
the English guards were removed from Whitehall, Dutch guards
were marched up to it, and he was told by one of his late
ministers that the Prince would enter London next day, and he
had better go to Ham. He said, Ham was a cold damp place,
and he would rather go to Rochester. He thought himself very
cunning in this, as he meant to escape from Rochester to
France. The Prince of Orange and his friends knew that, per-
fectly well, and desired nothing more. So he went to Graves-
end, in his royal barge, attended by certain lords, and watched
by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous people, who were
far more forgiving than he had ever been, when they saw him
490 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
in his humiliation. On the night of the twenty -third of
December, not even then understanding that everybody wanted
to get rid of him, he went out, absurdly, through his Rochester
garden, down to the Medway, and got away to France, where
he rejoined the Queen.
There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, and the
authorities of London. When the Prince came, on the day after
the King's departure, he summoned the Lords to meet him, and
soon afterwards, all those who had served in any of the Parlia-
ments of King Charles the Second. It was finally resolved by
these authorities that the throne was vacant by the conduct of
King James the Second ; that it was inconsistent with the safety
and welfare of this Protestant kingdom, to be governed by a
Popish prince ; that the Prince and Princess of Orange should
be King and Queen during their lives and the life of the survivor
of them ; and that their children should succeed them, if they
had any. That if they had none, the Princess Anne and her
children should succeed ; that if she had none, the heirs of the
Prince of Orange should succeed.
On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hundred and
eighty-nine, the Prince and Princess, sitting on a throne in
Whitehall, bound themselves to these conditions. The Pro-
testant religion was established in England, and England's
great and glorious Revolution was complete.
CHAPTER XXXVII
I HAVE now arrived at the close of my little history. The
events which succeeded the famous Revolution of one thousand
six hundred and eighty-eight, would neither be easily related
nor easily understood in such a book as this.
William and Mary reigned together, five years. After the
death of his good wife, William occupied the throne, alone, for
seven years longer. During his reign, on the sixteenth of Sep-
tember, one thousand seven hundred and one, the poor, weak
creature who had once been James the Second of England, died
in France. In the meantime he had done his utmost (which
was not much) to cause William to be assassinated, and to regain
CONCLUSION
491
his lost dominions. James's son was declared, by the French
King, the rightful King of England : and was called in
France the CHEVALIER Saint George, and in England
The Pretender. Some infatuated people in England, and
particularly in Scotland, took up the Pretender's cause from
time to time — as if the country had not had Stuarts enough ! —
and many lives were sacrificed, and much misery was occa-
sioned. King William died on Sunday, the seventh of March,
one thousand seven hundred and two, of the consequences of an
accident occasioned by his horse stumbling with him. He
was always a brave patriotic Prince, and a man of remarkable
abilities. His manner was cold, and he made but few friends ;
but he had truly loved his Queen. When he was dead, a lock of
her hair, in a ring, was found tied with a black ribbon round his
left arm.
He was succeeded by the Princess Anne, a popular Queen,
who reigned twelve years. In her reign, in the month of May,
one thousand seven hundred and seven, the Union between
England and Scotland was effected, and the two countries were
incorporated under the name of Great Britain. Then, from
492 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the year one thousand seven hundred and fourteen to the
year one thousand eight hundred and thirty, reigned the four
Georges.
It was in the reign of George the Second, one thousand seven
hundred and forty-five, that the Pretender did his last mischief,
and made his last appearance. Being an old man by that time,
he and the Jacobites — as his friends were called — put forward
his son, Charles Edward, known as the Young Chevalier.
The Highlanders of Scotland, an extremely troublesome and
wrong-headed race on the subject of the Stuarts, espoused his
cause, and he joined them, and there was a Scottish rebellion to
make him King, in which many gallant and devoted gentlemen
lost their lives. It was a hard matter for Charles Edward to
escape abroad again, with a high price on his head ; but the
Scottish people were extraordinarily faithful to him, and, after
undergoing many romantic adventures, not unlike those of
Charles the Second, he escaped to France. A number of
charining stories and delightful songs arose out of the Jacobite
feelings, and belong to the Jacobite times. Otherwise I think
the Stuarts were a public nuisance altogether.
It was in the reign of George the Third that England lost
CONCLUSION 493
North America, by persisting in taxing her without her own
consent. That immense country, made independent under
Washington, and left to itself, became the United States ; one
of the greatest nations of the earth. In these times in which I
write, it is honourably remarkable for protecting its subjects,
wherever they may travel, with a dignity and a determination
which is a model for England. Between you and me, England
has rather lost ground in this respect since the days of Oliver
Cromwell.
The Union of Great Britain with Ireland — which had been
getting on very ill by itself — took place in the reign of George
the Third, on the second of July, one thousand seven hundred
and ninety-eight.
William the Fourth succeeded George the Fourth, in
the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty, and reigned
seven years. Queen Victoria, his niece, the only child of the
Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third, came to the
throne on the twentieth of June, one thousand eight hundred
and thirty-seven. She was married to PRINCE Albert of Saxe
Gotha on the tenth of February, one thousand eight hundred
and forty. She is very good, and much beloved. So I end,
like the crier, with
God Save the Queen !
THE END
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